Introduction
“Environmental Protection and Sustainable development must be an integral part of the mandates of all agencies of governments, of international organisations, and major private sectors institutions.” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1984; cited in Alma & Lozada, 1996) Radical Consumption is indeed the basic nature of the consumption or the fundamental consumption. (Hole & Hawker, 2006) Radical consumption and ethical consumption is moreover a similar aspects in the theory, both of the term means the buying of those goods which are ethically made or/and are having some aspect towards greenness. Ethical consumption in today’s time is the biggest movement towards brand building by any company. Ethical consumption is purchasing of products as well as services which a consumer considers to be made ethically and marketed ethically by a company. It basically means minimum harm to animal and natural environment with minimum exploitation of human and/or employees. (Anonymous, 2009)
American Marketing Association believed that green marketing is marketing of the products which are supposed to be an environmentally safe product. Green marketing includes a wide range of activities, which includes changes to the production process, change in product, changes in packaging, as well as changes in advertising. Originally the idea of green marketing came into existence during late 1980s. Early marketing researches’ findings have shown the indications of corporate interest in green marketing and suggested major innovation processes and changing steps. Case studies of companies, for example; the Body Shop, Volvo, Ecover, 3M as well as McDonalds were almost cited in every literature over the green marketing as to show how and why green marketing schemes could pay. During 1990s specialist brands like Ecover as well as Down to Earth enjoyed the growth of their companies which they failed to enjoy in later periods, and there was discontinuation in the specialist green range of some major companies like Lever Brothers as well as Sainsbury’s. (Peattie & Crane, 2005) The philosophy as well as process of marketing is built around the customer of a company as well as relationship between them (the company and the customer). Peattie and Crane (2005) suggested that “green marketing will not work in the face of customer distrust, but then that distrust may be partly a product of the types of green marketing that relied upon so far.” (ibid, 2005)
“Green marketing is a part as well as parcel of the overall corporate strategy.” (Menon & Menon, 1997; cited in Prakash, 2002) Green Marketing is also linked closely to the industrial ecological as well as environmental sustainability issues such as extensive producers’ accountability, life-cycle study, material use as well as resource flows, plus eco-efficiency. Prakash (2002) believed that marketing literature on greening products and/or greening firms builds on both the societal as well as social marketing research. (ibid, 2002) According to Ward (2009) green marketing is simply the method of selling products and/or services which are based on their environmental benefits. In such conditions the product or/and production methods and/or packaging methods can be environmentally friendly. The assumption of green marketing is that buying decision of potential consumers will base on services’ and/or products’ greenness. (Ward, 2009)
Schaefer (2007) asks the question that “Is there only an environmental issue to worry about?” (Schaefer, 2007) and suggested that “If taken to natural consumption, green consumption would surely require some sacrifices.” (ibid, 2007) According to Schaefer (2007) the thought behind the green marketing is that today there is large number of customers who are ready to be charged little bit extra for a product which is environmentally friendly and comes from a companies which too are environmentally friendly. But even the idea of green marketing faces some issues in itself. It issue is the idea of greening the world through marketing which companies follow not for the issue to help environment but to increase the sales and profit. Another problem with green marketing is that the green revolution would not work with the current and expected customer demands. Just a small number of customers who are dedicated towards greenness will go to a significant depth in order to promote the issue of green marketing within the business world. (ibid, 2007)
The notion of green consumption according to Guattari ([1989] 2000) is of recycling; buying green products; and the act of consuming less, these three area of green consumption are clearly all linked, related as well as are between each other. (Guattari, [1989] 2000) According to Littler (2009) the issue with the Guattari’s buying green concept is the culture and social divisions around it. Often these kind of green products are charged little more than the normal goods therefore are less preferred by the middle and lower-class people and customers. These kinds of products are not only preferred for the motive of their saving energy but also because people think buying them is luxurious and food products might have better taste and good quality. (Litter, 2009) As we know there are limited resources on the earth which are at the extent of getting finished. The notion of consume less is one of the solution in which if the consumer will consume less which will result in less demand of the good resulting in less production and less requirement of raw-materials. Therefore it is clear: just consume less. The practice of consume less is a well known area of green consumption where a relationship between environmental, mental as well as social ecologies already in circulation. (ibid, 2009) The most complex area in the green consumption is recycling. It is so because of the reason that it involves various steps and numerous material requirements. Many of the company have not yet been able to adopt this method resulting the failure of some process of recycling area in green consumption. (ibid, 2009)
According to Peattie (2005) the market researches taken during 1990s have shows the growing concern of the customers towards environment during that period. But the companies had taken it for granted that green would sell although many firms responded by showing some changes in their campaigns with more ecological friendly manner. (Peattie, 2005) Green marketing has also developed its own tradition. As a result of which the companies, customers, corporation as well as colleagues, they all are having hard time in trying to develop a greener strategy. (ibid, 2005) Peattie (2005) suggested that green marketing is characterised by the socio-environmental subvention that many usual commodities successfully enjoy as well as the performance effect of eliminating unsafe manufactured goods components. Therefore the products which are often believed to be in a very hard as well as aggressive position are green products. (ibid, 2005)
Marketers should have knowledge about the social as well as ethical responsibility along with the issue happening from their actions. (Dibb and Simkin, 2001)In this case Corporate Social Responsibility plays a vital role. Corporate Social Responsibility is a mean by which a business can work ethically and according to Kotler and Lee (2006) “Corporate Social Responsibility is a commitment to improve community well being through discretionary business practices and contributions of resources.” (Kotler and Lee, 2006: 3; cited in Littler, 2009) According to Littler (2009) Corporate Social Responsibility is a mean or a way through which corporations scams on for whitewashing their flawed image in front of public as a result of which it can avoid itself being related to the issues such as human rights abuses and/or labour exploitation – or corporations can also use tokenistic eco projects for greenwashing their brand name in an era of public worry over the issue of global warming. (Littler, 2009) As Littler (2009) in his book says, “Corporate Social Responsibility is a mean by which corporations aim to ‘give something back’ to the society and community they are part of.” (ibid, 2009) According to Brenkert (2008) the critical problem with ethical marketing is on how to plan a system for manufacture, supply, as well as product monitoring in an ethical manner is essential when marketing relations has an important part in the corporation. (Brenkert, 2008) “Current ethical challenges to marketing arise during a time when marketing, as well as most businesses face considerable change.” (ibid, 2008)
During 1999 there was food scare which was insinuation for retailers, customers, regulators as well as producers. Although government promises, statistics in a NOP opinion poll states that majority of the consumers were worried about the intake genetically modified foodstuff, 88 per cent were having knowledge about GM foods, whereas 60 per cent of the public were worried about its consumption. Supermarkets were guaranteed to take assertion from traders about the GM’s ingredients in goods delivered to them. Safeway as well as Tesco have taken measures to label clearly food products modified by GM. While stores like Sainsbury’s have started with hot-line services in order to help consumers’ queries, issues as well as fears in relation to the GM food products. Some companies to increase their selling has stopped printing the right information on their products, i.e. they no more print about GM ingredients on their goods although they were still in use. (Dibb and Simkin, 2001)
Bandvulc tyres are a leading manufacturer of retread tyres in The United kingdom today. They came over to motivate for the reason of their strong environmental culture imbedded throughout their organisation. Till now the company has helped in focusing their marketing material on the benefits of using recycled tires. In their advertisements the company has been using Varity of material to show their loyalty as well as devotion towards the environmental issues by development of green company logo. In their advertisements company has also been showing how their in-house team been working hard to develop a product for their customers which can help is reduction of CO2 omission in the atmosphere and less fuel consumption by the vehicles using their products. (Anonymous, 2009)
Conclusion
It is clear that Radical Consumption, Green marketing and Ethical marketing revolve around same central concept of rightness and greenness. But they have a very thin line of difference between them. Normally people think green and ethical marketing to be one and a same thing, but theoretically they are two different aspects. As discussed earlier green marketing is mainly related to environmental aspect, the ‘greenness’ aspect, where as ethical marketing is mainly related to the right way of marketing a good, the ‘rightness’ aspect. Radical consumption can also be discussed as ethical consumption, which covers both the green and ethical marketed goods. If a person buys goods which are green and ethical, they are ethical (radical) consumers. As world Commission on Environmental and Development said, it’s just not the part of the company, but government as well as the consumers to make this a success. Different writers came up with different theories and conclusion on these topics. But at the end their writing were having same meaning and bases. As discussed with some example and case study of GM food products and Bandvulc tires, the company promoted their products with green and ethical marketing, and the customers for helping the environment were ready to pay a bit extra for every unit. Although in GM food case, there it was seen to be boycotted by the consumer, as they were worried about the environment and their health as the food product which was sold was not green and genetically modified. Therefore, we can say not just greenness is important but goodness as well as fairness is important too. Thereby, radical consumption is basically consumption of goods which are produced and marketed not just green but also can be ethical good.
Reference & Bibliography.
1. Anonymous (2009) http://www.bandvulc.com/SiteHomepage.aspx Accessed on: 17th April 2009.
2. Anonymous (2009) http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ShoppingEthically/WhyBuyEthically.aspx Accessed on: 19th April 2009.
3. Alma, T. M. & Lozada, H. R. (1996) Green marketing in a Unified Europe, Haworth Press.
4. Brenkert, G. G. (2008) Marketing Ethics, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.
5. Dibb, S. & Simkin, L. (2001) The Marketing Casebook: cases and concepts, 2nd Edition, London, Thomson Learning.
6. Guattari, F. ([1989] 2000) The Three Ecologies, Trans. I. Pindar & P. Sutton. London: Continuum.
7. Hole, G. & Hawker, S. (2006) The Oxford English Minidictionary, 6th Edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
8. Kotler, P. & Lee, N. (2006) Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the most good for your company and your cause, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
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10. Menon, A. and Menon, A. (1997) ‘Enviropreneurial marketing strategy: the emergence of corporate environmentalism as market strategy’, Journal of Marketing, 61: 51-67.
11. Peattie, K. (2005) ‘Green Marketing: legend, myth, force or prophesy?’, Qualitative Market Research: an international Journal, Vol. 8. No. 4. Pp: 357 – 370.
12. Peattie, K. and Crane, A. (2005) ‘Green marketing: legend, myth, farce or prophesy?’, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 8(4): 357-370.
13. Prakash, A. (2002) ‘Green Marketing, Public Policies and Managerial Strategy’, Business Strategy and the Environment, 11: 285-297.
14. Schaefer, A. (2007) http://www.open2.net/blogs/money/index.php/2007/06/25/green_marketing?blog=5. Accessed on: 4th April 2009.
15. Ward, S. (2009) http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/marketing/g/greenmarketing.htm. Accessed on: 4th April 2009.
16. World Commission on Environment & Development (1984) Our Common Future, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Source: Kunal Rathi’s University’s Assignment (2009)
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