Green Marketing

Many individuals and sectors of the world’s communities have always taken care to have a minimal impact on the environment. However in more recent years, in response to global warming and other damage that humans are inflicting on the environment and the natural world, there has been a call for large corporations as the major contributors to the damage to minimise their impact. When once, the conscious consumer was required to conduct their own research in order to source ethical products, publications such as Shop Ethical: The Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping have simplified the process. This has led manufacturers of cleaning and personal care products, particularly, to improve some of their processes and to change their marketing strategies to attract the conscious consumer.

Image: http://www.ethical.org.au

Anne Marie Todd’s article, The Aesthetic Turn in Green Marketing: Environmental Consumer Ethics of Natural Personal Care Products, highlights some of the changes that have occurred in response to the increasing market for environmentally sensitive personal care products.  Even for the consumer who limits their consumerism, there are still necessities required to maintain even a “most basic level of personal hygiene” (Todd 2004, 89) so the market will always be there for at least the most basic of personal care products. Companies respond to this by marketing their products as “self-improvement aids” promoting a combination of both “aesthetics and green consumer ethics” (Todd 2004, 89) that will “enhance the health or appearance of the consumer as well as the well-being of the environment” (Todd 2004, 93).

Todd (2004, 89) believes that companies need to be aware that there are consumers whose “buying habits already reflect an awareness of ecological implications of consumption”, as well as others who “must be convinced that the eco-costs of products are important”, and that their products need to be marketed to both of these groups. Consumers not only wish to purchase products that are environmentally friendly but also from companies with environmentally sensitive “business ethics and social responsibility” that reflect consumer values of “community, honesty and integrity” (Todd 2004, 92).

Companies that market successfully to all consumers establish an “eco-friendly brand identity” (Todd 2004, 92) that promotes their products in a way that attracts the green consumer as well as increasing awareness of environmental issues in order to attract all other consumers to their products, effectively creating a broader market of green consumers.

References

Ray, Nick and Healy, Clint. 2012.  Shop Ethical: The Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping. Ethical Consumer Group: Melbourne. 

Todd, Anne Marie. 2004. “The Aesthetic Turn in Green Marketing: Environmental Consumer Ethics of Natural Personal Care Products.” Ethics and the Environment  9 (2): 86-102.