Green Marketing

Categories: Ecology Environmental Issues Environmental Protection

Essay, Pages 5 (1018 words)

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The following sample essay on “Green Marketing “: talks about the development of green marketing and how it affects the environment.

Changed marketing

More recently green marketing is accepting a sustainability mindset as mentioned in the Brundtland report. Firms were required to increase green initiatives and cooperate in inventions of green technologies. Although there have been many improvements it is quite a long way to full sustainability.

Marketing environmentally

From 1980 onwards, green marketing improved a lot with much due to the result of many environmental calamities and their wider media projection to the public; environmental concerns grew stronger resulting in increased efforts from all entities for the protection of the environment.

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During this phase, sustainability had developed and there were some official definitions for sustainability. A large number of firms got involved in green marketing campaigns, the wider notion then was cost-saving, collaborating with non-governmental entities, and adopting clean technologies. This phase also brought the attention to the green customer and many attempts were made to qualify what a green customer is.

Firms were competing hard to attract green shoppers.

Conventional marketing

Green marketing initially concentrated only on major issues such as synthetic pesticides, pollution of air and water, etc. Green marketing for the organizations was understood as making firms comply with all environmental regulations. Any extra work for improvement was seen as an additional cost but there were very few businessmen that converted environmental issues into profitable business opportunities, for instance, The Body Shop.

I have described the green marketing in sustainability and the need for environmental protection, now I will focus on the green competitive edge.

Environmental protection is important if the quality of life is to be improved. It is always debated whether firms can profit from the protection of the environment. If the arguments given are considered good enough for adopting green marketing in the marketing department of every organization, they are not very attractive to moving towards a green economy.

Green sustainable competitive edge

Earlier I examined that firms do not only have economic responsibility but they are also socially and environmentally responsible. In addition to pressure from competitors, stakeholders also impart pressure as they follow the organization’s environmental behavior and respond based on their interests. Moving Further, I will discuss tools that managers who are considering changing their business to green can use. This examination is based on traditional concepts of Porter’s Five forces model and resource-based view, by utilizing them in environmental aspects of the business. The goal here is to find out aspects that help firms to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Every concept has a positive aspect but none is broad enough to include all factors and sources of green sustainable competitive advantage. Analyzing the aspects of industrial, institutional, and business I intend to provide deep analysis. The conclusion reached from the aggregate result is anticipated to support the chosen aspects.

The combination of institutional concept with a resource-based view has been used by certain researchers earlier, for example, Bruce Clemens and Thomas J. Douglas (2006), and Christine Oliver (1997) in examining companies’ behavior toward the environment. Such a study offers a foundation for research but the researchers do mention that these two concepts are not sufficient to contain the entire objective and some questions remain unanswered. As “green buyer” has not been covered, the industry aspect based on Porter’s five forces model is included. It’ll cover the purchaser’s viewpoint and also highlight the effects that green alternatives can have on business competition.

Resource-based view

This concept states that a company’s competitive edge lies in its unique resources and ability. To gain a competitive edge, the company’s resources should have certain qualities. Unique qualities that should be possessed by the resource are dissimilarity and immovability. Therefore, companies can gain a competitive edge if their resources and that of their contenders are dissimilar. Movable resources will not help firms in creating competitive leads or maintaining leads for long. When an industry has higher profits, it attracts new competitors. Hurdles for entry of new competitors are a sign of competitiveness, hurdles can be in the form of better corporate culture, better image of the firm, etc. With these resources companies try to position themselves in the market so that they can make use of a resource in a constructive manner that others have failed to do. Fast-paced changes in technology and environment result in some materials or capacities becoming outdated. Therefore, it is not beneficial to have a fixed set of capabilities and materials.

One vital quality of an achieving business is its capability to create new capabilities and obtain newer resources as per Stephen S. Standifird and Scott R. Marshall (2005), Stuart L. Hart (1995). By concentrating on harmony with the environment businesses can create new capacities and obtain newer resources. Their ability to obtain and utilize will improve the firm’s competitive edge. If it’s not concentrated upon now then synchronization of economic improvements with environmental protection and society will fail. This synchronization can be achieved by favored consumer preferences as well as enhanced environmental regulations. Businesses should undertake strategic activities to facilitate environmentally sustainable economic production for the survival of the firm.

Stuart L. Hart (1995) worked on this topic by including environmental demand in Jay Barney’s (1991) resource-based theory and presented the natural resource-based view of a business. In his research Stuart L. Hart presented three connected strategies; Stuart L. Hart further mentions that this can help firms to gain a sustainable competitive edge in light of their green actions. Elimination of pollution became an action plan in the natural resource-based view. Controlling activities and pollution prevention will direct operation cost reduction. Product stewardship strategy emphasizes the necessary objective of accountability of businesses due to their impact on the environment from obtaining natural resources and manufacturing activities, to consumption of manufactured products.

For reducing costs to the environment, businesses have to invent environmentally safe technologies to manufacture by using minimum less toxic substances and non-renewable materials, there should also be steps taken to remove the products after they have completed their lifespan such as that of Oracle.