This document provides information about green marketing as a new phenomenon in marketing. It discusses the concept of green marketing and why firms adopt green marketing strategies. Some of the key green marketing strategies discussed include green product, green price, green place, and green promotion. The document also outlines challenges to green marketing and provides managerial implications. It proposes a political economy model to understand forces that drive organizations towards environmental orientation and how this relates to marketing strategy and performance.

1. Om Kothari Institute of Management & Research, Kota
Green marketing
a new phenomenon of marketing
MS Richa Chaturvedi,
Mr.Prashant Unnithan
]

2. Author’s information
 Name Richa Chaturvedi
 Designation -Asst professor
 Institute -Om Kothari institute Of
Management & Research Kota
 Mailing Address -44,adarsh colony,chopra farm, dadwara kota
 Mobile -9783585616
 Mail
richa31_2006@yahoo.co.in,mishrapratha@gmail.com
Co Author’s information
 Name Mr.Prashant Unnithan
 Designation -Asst professor
 Institute -Jaipur National University
 Mobile -9772058632
 Mail Hello2pras@yahoo.co.in

3. Green marketing - a new phenomenon of Marketing
Abstract
Marketing is always considered as a consumer oriented concept, all
marketing practices always focused on providing desired satisfaction to
customer. But as we all know business world is so very dynamic no
concept no technique can be remain forever. As the changes occur in
business environment especially in term of consumer taste & preference
marketers has to change in their activities accordingly.
Growing concern of the customers about environmental issues & health
can also be considered as a drastic change in consumer’s perception.
Now consumer prefers to have those products which are healthy for their
own health as well as for the environment. Green marketing comes as a
panacea in this concern. Green marketing is concerned as a marketing of
product that is presumed to be environmentally safe. It incorporates a
broad range of activities include product modification, changes to the
production process, packaging change as well as modifying advertising.
This paper focus on identifying various factor responsible for green
marketing, it also focus on various green marketing strategies used by the
marketers, green marketing mix.
Key words:
s concept of green marketing ,Motives behind green marketing strategies,
elements of green marketing mix. Other strategies targeting,
positioning .Challenges for green marketing practices. Managerial
implications.
What is green marketing
Environmental issues have gained importance in business as well as in
public life through out the world. It is not like that a few leaders of
different countries or few big renowned business houses are concerned
about the day to day deterioration of oxygen level in our atmosphere but

4. every common citizen of our country and the world is concerned about
this common threat of global warming.
So in this scenario of global concern, corporate houses has taken green-
marketing as a part of their strategy to promote products by employing
environmental claims either about their attributes or about the systems,
policies and processes of the firms that manufacture or sell them. Clearly
green marketing is part and parcel of over all corporate strategy; along
with manipulating the traditional marketing mix (product, price,
promotion
And place) , it require an understanding of public policy process. So we
can say green marketing covers a broad range of activities. Different
writers has given different definition about green marketing which tried
to cover all major components of green marketing According to Polonsky
(1994)- green or environmental marketing consists of all activities,
designed to generate and facilitate any exchange indented to satisfy
human needs and wants, such that the satisfaction of these needs and
wants occur with minimum detrimental impact on the natural
environment. Mintu and Lozada(1993) defined green marketing as the
application of marketing tools to facilitate exchanges that satisfy
organizational and individual goals in such a way that the preservation,
protection and conservation of the physical environment is upheld”.
According to Stanton and Futrell(1987)-all activities designed to
generate and facilitate any exchanges intended to satisfy human needs
and wants; therefore it ensures that the interest of the organization and
all it consumers are protected, as voluntary exchange will not take place
unless the buyers and sellers are mutually benefited. The definition also
includes the protection of natural environment by attempting to minimize
the detrimental impact; this exchange has on the environment. This
second point is very important for human consumption by its very nature
is destructive to the natural environment. So we can see that green
marketing encompasses a broad range of activities including product
modification, change to production process, packaging change as well as
modifying advertising.

5. Why Green marketing Firms may choose to green their systems, policies
and products due to economic and noneconomic pressures from their
consumers, business partners, regulators, citizen groups and other
stakeholders(non market environment).some other reasons may includes:
Some scholar claim that green policies/products are profitable: green
policies can reduce costs; green firms can shape future regulations and
reap first mover advantage.
Now day’s firms are becoming more concerned about their social
responsibilities
(S.R). they have taken S.R as a good strategic move to build up an image
in the heart of consumers. Even the socially responsible firms are getting
leverage, whenever they intend to enter into foreign countries. There are
example of firms like ITC, HLL (Surf excel) who are heavily promoting
them as an environmentally concerned firms, where as there is example of
firms who are working in this direction in a silence manner like coca
cola, who have invested corers of money in various recycling activities, as
well as having modified their packaging to minimize it’s environmental
impact. While being concerned about the environment coke has not used
their concern as a marketing tool.
Change in customer’s attitude:
With increasing concern about environment, consumers attitude towards
firms having green policies or green products are becoming motivating
factor.
Governmental pressure: In all most all civilized countries Govt. has the
law to protect the consumers and the environment from the harmful goods
or byproducts and ensure through law that all types of consumers have
the ability to evaluate the environmental composition of goods. Govt.
established several regulations to control the amount of hazardous waste
produced by firms and many by-products of production are controlled

6. through the issuing of various environmental licenses, thus shaping the
behavior of organization towards more socially responsible one.
Competitive pressure:
Competition is the integral part of business; and you can not
Over-look any competitive action taken by your competitor. So to be in
the market you have to have a vigil over your competitor’s move for
marketing its products. Some firms have taken green-marketing as a
strategy to build up its image rather than inculcate it as a part of the
policy and work silence. In some instances this competitive pressure has
caused an entire industry to modify and thus reduce its detrimental
environmental behavior.
Cost or profit issue:
Firms may also use green-marketing in an attempt to have an
Control over the cost associated with waste disposal. Therefore firms that
would able to introduce green-marketing by not inculcating or lesser use
of harmful ingredients would able to reduce its operating cost to a
considerable extend.
Green Marketing Strategies
Marketing mix elements that are product, price, place & promotion are
always considered as pillars for any marketing strategies .without
considering them properly no marketing strategies can be implemented
effectively & successfully. As green marketing emerged as a new
phenomenon in marketing .to be part of marketing it can be effective
without considering it marketing mix elements or green marketing mix
elements these elements are:
GREEN PRODUCT

7. The products have to be developed depending on the needs of the
customers who prefer environment friendly products. Products can be
made from recycled materials or from used goods. Efficient products not
only save water, energy and money, but also reduce harmful effects on the
environment. Green chemistry forms the growing focus of product
development. The marketer's role in product management includes
providing product designers with market-driven trends and customer
requests for green product attributes such as energy saving, organic,
green chemicals, local sourcing, etc., For example, Nike is the first
among the shoe companies to market itself as green. It is marketing its
Air Jordan shoes as environment-friendly, as it has significantly reduced
the usage of harmful glue adhesives. It has designed this variety of shoes
to emphasize that it has reduced wastage and used environment-friendly
materials
.
GREEN PRICE
Green pricing takes into consideration the people, planet and profit in a
way that takes care of the health of employees and communities and
ensures efficient productivity. Value can be added to it by changing its
appearance, functionality and through customization, etc. Wall Mart
unveiled its first recyclable cloth shopping bag. IKEA started charging
consumers when they opted for plastic bags and encouraged people to
shop using its "Big Blue Bag".
GREEN PLACE
Green place is about managing logistics to cut down on transportation
emissions, thereby in effect aiming at reducing the carbon footprint. For
example, instead of marketing an imported mango juice in India it can be
licensed for local production. This avoids shipping of the product from
far away, thus reducing shipping cost and more importantly, the
consequent carbon emission by the ships and other modes of transport.
GREEN PROMOTION

8. Green promotion involves configuring the tools of promotion, such as
advertising, marketing materials, signage, white papers, web sites, videos
and presentations by keeping people, planet and profits in mind. British
petroleum (BP) displays gas station which its sunflower motif and boasts
of putting money into solar power. Indian Tobacco Company has
introduced environmental-friendly papers and boards, which are free of
elemental chlorine. Toyota is trying to push gas/electric hybrid
technology into much of its product line. It is also making the single
largest R&D investment in the every-elusive hydrogen car and promoting
itself as the first eco-friendly car company. International business
machines Corporation (IBM) has revealed a portfolio of green retail
store technologies and services to help retailers improve energy efficiency
in their IT operations. The center piece of this portfolio is the IBM
SurePOS 700, a point-of-sale system that, according to IBM, reduces
power consumption by 36% or more. We even see the names of retail
outlets like "Reliance Fresh", fresh@Namdhari Fresh and Desi, which
while selling fresh vegetables and fruits, transmit an innate
communication of green marketing.Green marketer can attract customers
on the basis of performance, money savings, health and convenience, or
just plain environmental friendliness, so as to target a wide range of
green consumers.
Green Targeting
Consumers often encourage companies to start with green products, as
energy-efficient light bulbs, ecological food or ecological clothes what
cause less harm to the nature and to the health or energy saving services.
More and more consumers seek to become green and want to pay a
competitive price or even higher price for that. The target group of green
products and serviced are existing green consumers or potential green
consumers who care about green company efforts to supply with green
products to the market and to provide with added-value to consumers.
Green positioning

9. Strategic positioning is about building a picture of the market and the
interrelationships between the targeted customers, competitors and the
competitive advantage. The company should target a segment of the
market where it can satisfy customer needs better than its competitors,
based on the company’s distinctive strengths (Christmann, 2000).
Strategic positions can emerge from three different sources (Porter,
1995):
• Customers need
• Customer’s accessibility
• Range of a company’s products or services
Needs-based positioning focus on if the company’s strategy is about
serving most or all the needs of a particular part of its customers. Access-
based positioning focus on customers that is accessible in different ways,
which can be based on geography, how dense the customers are situated
and so forth. Variety-based positioning centre on the product or service
varieties rather than customer segments. A company can base its strategic
position on one or a combination of the three (Porter, 1995). Having
defined positioning, strategy can be identified as the creation of a unique,
valuable position, involving a different set of activities.
Challenges for going green
• Green products require renewable and recyclable material, which is
costly
• Requires a technology, which requires huge investment in R & D
• Water treatment technology, which is too costly
• Majority of the people are not aware of green products and their uses
• Majority of the consumers are not willing to pay a premium for green
products

10. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS
Green marketing subsumes greening products as well as greening firms.
Though normative concerns impact consumers’ and firms’ decision
making, economic aspects of green marketing should not be neglected.
Managers need to identify what ought to be greened: systems, processes
or products? Consumer apathy to green products is due to many factors,
including inadequate information about levels of greenness, lack of
credibility of firms’ claims and the tendency to free ride. It also seems
that green products that offer direct excludable benefits to consumers
(such as pharmaceuticals with minimum side effect and nutritious and
natural foods) would have higher acceptability. Consumer apathy may
also be attributed to the belief that individual actions alone cannot impact
the macro picture, and collective endeavors are impeded by free riding.
To tackle these market-related problems, perhaps initiatives in the
nonmarket environment may bear fruit. To curb free riding and to
reassure consumers that their actions will have macro impact, some
green marketers favor policies/regulations that lead to collective
sacrifices. This leads to another set of challenges, because environmental
issues are often highly contested in terms of their etiologies and solutions.
Many such disputes are attributable to ideological and economic factors.
To some, collective sacrifices signify intrusive big government and side-
stepping individual responsibility. Economic considerations are even
more complex. There is a rich literature in public policy on how the
distribution of benefits and costs impacts policy processes and what types
of political strategy are appropriate in different contexts (Lowie, 1964;
Wilson, 1980). Actors may favor the status quo if the proposed collective
sacrifice imposes costs on them. If the benefits are diffused, policy
supporters could have
Difficulties in mobilizing winning coalitions. On the other hand, with
concentrated benefits and diffused costs, mobilizing winning coalitions to
support collective sacrifices is easier. When both benefits and costs are
concentrated or diffused, the outcomes are difficult to predict. As this
discussion suggests, the tasks of green marketers who favor collective
sacrifices as vehicles for achieving their objectives are complicated by

11. the politics of the nonmarket environment (Koll man and Prakash,
2001).Information provision about greenness is a key component of green
marketing. Clearly, firms should not advertise products’ environmental
benefits unless such claims can be credibly substantiated. . This paper has
identified different strategies that the company must follow in order to
face the new world challenges.
A Political Economy Model of Enviro-marketing Strategies
With the help of this model the marketing managers will be able to better
understand the critical forces that drive organizations to become
environmentally oriented, their association with marketing strategy
formulation will be established and the ultimate impact on marketing
performance will be demonstrated. Companies that have adopted some
types of environmental accountability have found
Some benefits in the adaptation of an ecological approach. Some of the
activities that have been implemented include-
• building consumers demand for green products,
• spending revenues to educate buyers,
• Building new infra-structure to facilitate recycling and prevent
pollution.

12. Being branded a green company can be potentially beneficial to business
organizations. The green image generate a more positive public image
which can, in turn, enhance sales, increase stock price and open access to
public capital markets. It may enhance the overall perception of product
quality and when coupled with environmental benefits inherent in a
product and it’s use, may provide the added value that customer would
favor.
Key to success in green marketing
Being genuine means
a) That companies are actually doing what they claim to be doing in their
green marketing campaign
b) And that the rest of their business policies are consistent with whatever
they are doing that's environmentally friendly. Both these conditions have
to be met for their business to establish the kind of environmental
credentials that will allow a green marketing campaign to succeed.
Educating customers
Isn’t just a matter of letting people know companies are doing whatever
they are doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting
them know why it matters? Otherwise, for a significant portion of their
target market, it's a case of "So what?" and their green marketing
campaign goes nowhere.
Giving customers an opportunity to participate
Means personalizing the benefits of company’s environmentally friendly
actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive
environmental action.
Some cases:
HLL (Surf-excel) some kids in Mumbai’s Bainganwadi slums are
grateful to Surf-Excel, the Rs 485cr brand which introduces a feel-good
marketing campaign-The Surf Excel 10/10 drive.

13. This saw
the surf
excel
buyers in
the four
cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata Samsung an amount to
HLL (now HUL). The company in turn donates that amount to an NGO
that was involved in educating underprivileged children.
Ponds: The Rs355cr brand ponds of HLL, tied up with United Nations
Development Fund for Women. For every flap of ponds cold cream
mailed by the consumers, the company would contribute Rs2/- to the fund
to fight domestic violence.
Even though the proportion of ad spends from its Rs1000cr advertising
and promotion budget have been minimal, HLL says most of its brands
will look for long term strategic
Linkage with social causes.
Vice President Skin care, HLL, Ashok Venkatramani told CNBC-TV18,
“if the activity is not housed in brand promise, than it looks like a
charitable activity and in my view, those activities are difficult to sustain
in long run. In our case, specific to fair and lovely, or even ponds, these
are strongly housed in what the brand stands for and what brand promise
is all about, hence they are easy to sustain and will reap huge benefits.”

14. Sun feast: Here another difference to note, corporate social
responsibility (CSR) is being used to build individual brands rather than
the corporate brand. A case in point is the Rs16000Cr ITC, that ran their
CSR campaign, about putting India first for its e-copal initiative two
years back. Cut to the present, the company has linked the Sun feast
brand to its social forestry campaign, where the company chips in with 25
paisa for every pack of Sun feast biscuit and pasta sold and consumers,
who buy the Atta brand, Aashirvaad, contribute towards ITC’s rain
harvesting campaign. Divisional chief executive, ITC, Ravi Navarre says,
“Consumers like to connect with brand, if the brand is seen as a socially
responsible brand, then consumers get an emotional connect that far
beyond just usage of the brand and consuming it. It is this higher level of
connect that we are attempting to create through this campaign.”
Conclusion:
Green marketing emerged as a new panacea of marketing. now a days
when customers become cautious about their environment so it become
compulsory for companies to incorporate green marketing practices in
their strategies. Though there are many challenges in the way of green
marketing in form of consumer awareness about it, its efficiency for the
companies in terms of cost benefit .but by proper incorporation of green
marketing phenomenon in business strategies company can improve its

15. profitability in term of money as well as securing favorable image in
society.
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