Green Marketing

The term Green Marketing came into prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s and it? refers to the process of selling products and / or services based on their environmental benefits. Such products or services may be environmentally friendly or produced and /or packaged in an environment friendly way. The obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service's "greenness" as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly.?

Unfortunately, a majority of people believe that green marketing refers solely to the promotion or advertising of products with environmental characteristics. Terms like Phosphate Free, Recyclable, Refillable, Ozone Friendly, and Environment Friendly are some of the things consumers most often associate with green marketing. While these terms are green marketing claims, in general green marketing is a much broader concept, one that can be applied to consumer goods, industrial goods and even services. For example, around the world there are resorts that are beginning to promote themselves as "ecotourist" facilities. Meaning thereby, facilities that "specialise" in experiencing nature or operating in a fashion that minimises their adverse environmental impact. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, altering production process, packaging, and even advertising formats.

Green marketing evolved over three phases. First phase was termed as "Ecological" and during this period all marketing activities were concerned with addressing environment problems and offer remedies for them.?

Second phase was "Environmental" where the focus shifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take care of pollution and waste issues.?

Third phase beginning late 1990s introduced "Sustainability" in green marketing. The term sustainable development? meant "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Consumer Perception is changing in favour of environment friendly products. Consumer Perception means the way the consumers usually view or feel about a certain product or service. It can also be related to expected customer satisfaction from a certain product or service. As a consequence of altered attitudes of the consumers, companies have started to adopt green marketing strategies to appeal to increasing awareness of environment-friendliness. These marketing strategies, named as green marketing, have caused companies to adopt green policies in their pricing, promotion, product features and distribution activities.?

There is a rapid growth of awareness among the consumers all over the world regarding the protection of environment in which they live. People do want to bequeath a clean earth and environment to their offspring.The phrase “environmentally friendly” has become a synonym for goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies aimed to cause minimal or no harm on the environment.