Green marketing is a developing field in the marketing department. It refers to the procedure by which products and services are sold on the basis of their environmental advantages.
In such a case, the products can be of two types. They can be produced in an environmentally friendly way or they can be packaged in an environmentally friendly way. Green marketing is based on the assumption that customers will view a product or service as environmentally friendly and then implement their purchasing choices accordingly.
But there is an assumption that green marketing is not considered very obvious. This is the price increase for a product at the time it is called green. Consumers think that since a product is green, consumers will be willing to pay more for it. This might not always be the case.
Green marketing catches up with environmental awareness becoming the main focus in many societies today. But it might not be a bed of roses for green marketing.
Some of the consumers tend to be skeptical about the green claims. Therefore, if false claims are discovered behind a company’s green claims or if the company produces some products that tend to contradict the green claims of one of its products, the company’s brands could be severely damaged. When a service or product presents itself as a green product when it is not, it is called “greenwashing.”
Advantages
There are many benefits of such marketing. For starters, it gives the host company an edge over its competitors. The company might also find some opportunities that other companies might not have. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a big part of the social responsibility of most companies by which they try to give something back to the people. Green marketing helps to do that.
In recent times, even the government has started putting pressure on companies to go green. On the other hand, companies also prefer to go green due to the increasing competition in the market. Green marketing helps a company to be “different” from its competitors. Going green can also help a business make more profit.
Disadvantages
The first disadvantage of green marketing is that it requires a large amount of recyclable and renewable materials. This is not easy to find and definitely not cheap. Green products also require a large investment in technology. Therefore, they are expensive. They also require water treatment technology. Even this is expensive.
After so much investment, the company has to make people aware of green products because even now, many consumers are not very aware of green products and services.
Lastly, even if consumers are aware of organic products, why should they pay a large sum for organic products when they can get the same product from alternative sources for a fraction of the price? These are answers that the corporate industry is still looking for.
Green marketing has come a long way, but it still has miles to go.
