Green Marketing for a Greener Future
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The Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs),
adopted since 2015, have provided humanity with a desirable and also inevitable
path to retain our livelihood on Earth. Goal number twelve, which is “Responsible
Consumption and Production”, is one demanding for an answer in maintaining
today’s infinite cycle of production and consumption to a level, or in a way
that does not harm the sustainability of humankind. This goal is especially
important in the context of our society’s key functioning mechanism, capitalism,
in that it is held up by the very cycle itself. However, the cycle could bring
great harm to the Earth depending on the method in which this cycle is
implemented, since more production brings some ‘inevitable’ contamination and
consumption its ‘inevitable’ wastes. Related harms also include exclusion,
discrimination, resource depletion and more.
With such harms lurking in the very much foreseeable future, green
marketing is becoming a new trend in many market sectors and many companies are
seeking for new marketing strategies to become more environmentally friendly.
Lush is a renown in this field, and some of their strategies include not
packaging their products (“Naked
packaging”), using raw materials produced ‘sustainably’, and active
recycling of their containers (“Black
pots”).[1] Moreover,
Lush’s sustainable strategies are not limited to green objectives, but also
sustainability in general in that they are also against animal testing and that
they carry out human right promoting campaigns.
A typical Lush store
But why would companies
participate in making a greener environment? Anxiety for the environment may be
one reason, but the more dominant explanation is that it has become a tool, a
strategy for them to earn competitiveness in the market and ultimately gain more
profit. Then why would green marketing lead to more profit? There are two more
actors in this mechanism, consumers and the government. Firstly, the consumers’
increased concern for the environment would be powerful motivating factor. This
not only leads to the implementation of green marketing strategies, but also
contributes in maintaining and improving its context in that consumers can act
as a monitoring personnel for the action of companies, and expose inappropriate
actions if any. Government policies are also a strong factor in determining
companies’ methods of management, using regulations or incentives to make
companies perform in an environmentally sound way. This is also why the overall
presidential or governmental stance towards the environment could greatly
affect the landscape of green marketing, since in companies’ view the
availability of financial resources or the level of limitations may vary
greatly.
In promoting green marketing, deciding the ‘what’ and the ‘how’
would be crucial for companies. For the ‘what’ part, there are four subjects –
also known as the 4Ps – that companies can choose from: product, place, price and
promotion. In the case of Lush, ‘product’ would be the various soaps, shampoos
and the raw materials used. If the way the products are manufactured or the
materials used are ‘green’, then that could be a green strategy. ‘Place’ here
means distribution channel, and saving energy in the process of distribution
and/or reducing the number of channels to go through would be the examples.
‘Price’ is also important in that it determines the amount in which the
environmentally friendly product is to be purchased. It also acts as a signal
in the market to show consumers, investors and competitors about the value and
profitability of the product, which would influence future prospects in related
fields. The method in which the products are displayed and accessed to the
consumers is ‘promotion’, which for instance indicates the ‘green’ materials
used in the actual designing and building of stores.
For the ‘how’ part, communication is the key. After companies have
decided upon what to focus on, the next step to take is to ensure that
consumers and related stakeholders are sufficiently informed about the efforts
made. Various methods can be utilized in this process, some of which include
advertising and eco-labeling. Advertising does not necessarily mean that
companies show everything done in the context of green marketing, but rather is
an act of choosing what to reveal and what to conceal. In some cases, companies
choose not to disclose their efforts – and this can itself be a marketing
strategy. Lush, for example, does not spend any money on advertising, and
rather uses an “internal strategy”, which includes staff members who act as
brand advocates.[2]
Eco-labelling is a method of officially proving and assessing the
eco-friendliness of each product, and provides evidence for consumers and
investors to rely on the company’s credibility. There are various types of
eco-labels, some of which are obligatory and offered by the government, and
others which are voluntary or managed by non-official institutions. The Korean
official eco-label is managed by the Ministry of Environment, and is given to
products which have achieved a certain level of improvement regarding its
eco-friendliness.[3]
Korean Eco-label
As such,
companies can choose to perform green marketing utilizing various systematic
tools and approaches. As environmental considerations are becoming inevitable,
companies are starting to implement these strategies, and what this
proliferation of green marketing shows is that pro-environment can lead to pro-profit. Green marketing
is showing some substantial and significant outcomes in the market, as the case
of Lush, and is consequently inducing more such actions among companies. Of
course, more effort is still needed to make this trend not end as just a trend,
but rather as an essential viewpoint when managing businesses – and these
efforts include improvements in the overall consciousness as well as more
governmental and inter-governmental contributions. With such efforts, the
infinite cycle of production and consumption in this society may turn out to be
sustainable after all.
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