Green marketing 741
addresses an inherent human need for a viable
environment, which may sometimes be at the
expense of more explicit material wants.
Recent years have witnessed an increasing
range of conservation-orientated behaviour
among consumers, from the recycling of cans
and bottles to the boom in returning
consumer durables to the supply chain through
small ads or car boot fairs.
Customer satisfaction. In the past, customer
satisfaction has been judged in terms of the
performance of the product at the moment
(or during the period) of consumption. A
green consumer may reject a product because
they become aware of the environmental harm
that the product causes in production or
disposal. They may also avoid a product
because they disapprove of the activities of the
producer, its suppliers or investors.
The product concept. If customer satisfaction is
increasingly dependent upon the production
process and on all the activities of the
producer, we are approaching the situation
where the company itself is becoming the
product consumed. Drucker’s (1973) famous
concept that ‘Marketing is the whole business
seen from its final result, that is from the
customers’ point of view’ seems set to
become an enforced reality for many
businesses, because the green movement
means that customers (or those who influence
them) are now actively looking at all aspects of
their company. As Bernstein (1992) comments:
‘The consumer wants to know about the
company. Companies won’t be able to hide
behind their brands. Who makes it will be as
important as what goes into it since the
former may reassure the customer about the
latter.’
Producer responsibility. The responsibilities of the
producer were conventionally seen in terms of
ensuring that products were fit for purpose,
fairly represented, safe and not priced or
promoted in a way that exploited customers.
Environmental concern has added a new layer
of responsibility concerned with the fate of the
product at the end of its life-span, an issue
which was previously irrelevant to marketers
beyond signalling the possibility of a new
purchase. For consumer durables such as cars,
white goods and consumer electronics, these
new responsibilities will have considerable
impacts on product design and supply chain
management.
Criteria for success.Traditional marketing theory
implies that if the traditional four Ps of the mix
are right, then success will follow in the form
of a fifth P, ‘Profits’. Green marketing success
involves ensuring that the marketing mix and
the company also meet four ‘S’ criteria
(Peattie, 1995):- Satisfaction of customer needs.
- Safety of products and production for
consumers, workers, society and the
environment. - Social acceptability of the products, their
production and the other activities of the
company. - Sustainability of the products, their
production and the other activities of the
company.
Demarketing. One unavoidable conclusion of
green marketing logic is that where a product
is being consumed and produced in an
unsustainable way, it may have to be
demarketed (either voluntarily or forcibly) to
reduce consumption. In tourism and energy
markets, changes in pricing or access to
products have been used to try to reduce the
level of consumption.
Companies can embrace environmental and
social improvements to their products or pro-
duction processes in a very pragmatic way that
reflects their desire to respond to customer
needs and to gain or maintain competitive
advantage. However, companies seeking to
pursue improved eco-performance often seem
to find it difficult if it is not underpinned by a
belief in the values and philosophy of greening.
This is analagous to total quality management,
where the difficulties that many western com-
panies have experienced in implementing it
reflects their focus on attempting to apply the