Green marketing 753
agenda. Some environmentalists have criticized
green marketing on the basis that ‘Changing
our shopping habits will not save the world’.
This is true, but if it creates improvement in the
eco-performance of businesses, it will buy
much needed time in which to understand how
to make the more important changes to our
economic, technical and political systems, in
order to manage our environment in a sustain-
able way. It is clear that the greening of
marketing and market forces will only have
real meaning if accompanied by changes to
corporate values and strategies, regulations,
investment processes, political systems, educa-
tion and trade.
Another important role that will need to
be played by marketing in the future is to
promote more sustainable ways to live and
consume. In addition to the marketing of new
products, technologies and services, we will
need the social marketing of many ideas, old
and new, in order to make our economies
more sustainable. These will include recycling,
fair trade, product-service substitutions, com-
posting, frugality, energy efficiency and less
materialistic ways of life. The concept of sus-
tainability itself will also need to be marketed.
A major piece of social market research com-
missioned by Lancashire County Council,
which examined perceptions of ‘quality of life’
(MacNaghten et al., 1995), drew two conclu-
sions that have significant implications for the
greening of marketing:
People generally are unfamiliar with the idea of
‘sustainability’ in its environmental sense. But
once they understand it, they appear to identify
positively with its values and priorities...
Overall, whilst there is substantial latent public
support for the aims and aspirations of sustain-
ability, there is also substantial and pervasive
scepticism about the goodwill of government
and other corporate interests towards its
achievement.These findings illustrate both the importance
and the challenge of making marketing more
sustainable. They confirm other research find-
ings showing that most people would like to
buy greener products from greener companies.
For companies that choose to ignore this cus-
tomer demand (whether explicit or latent), it is
questionable whether they are practising mar-
keting at all. Creating more sustainable market-
ing strategies will remain an uphill battle while
the majority of consumers remain ignorant of
what sustainability is all about, and dubious
about the ability of companies to contribute to
it. Winning this battle will be a key challenge
for marketers in this new millennium, and the
outcome will have a significant impact on the
quality of life of consumers and citizens for
generations to come.References
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