green marketing definition

green marketing definition

Green marketing, also called "Ecological marketing", is the use of the ecological positioning of a brand or product as a selling point, or the communication of the company's environmental actions to enhance its brand image.

Green Marketing Principle

Ecological marketing is carried out in the form of actions carried out by the company, based on:

the ecological characteristics of a product (ecological raw materials, recyclable or biodegradable product, fair trade product, etc.);

"Green advertising" campaigns (a tree planted for a purchase, etc.);

the company's environmental promises (foundations, ecological actions, etc.).

Green Marketing History

Green marketing first appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1975, the first conference on ecological marketing was held at the American Marketing Association (AMA), which led to the publication of one of the first books on green marketing entitled "Ecological Marketing".

In 1987, a document, the Brundtland Report, published by the young World Commission on Environment and Development, founded four years earlier, defined sustainable development as meeting "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

Green Marketing Objective

The main purpose of these green actions is above all to increase the company's sales, by involving the buyer in a "sustainable development" approach. The company's strategy is based on consumer confidence when buying a product. And the fact of buying this product for the consumer gives him the feeling of having done something for the environment. In the context of ecological marketing, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish purely marketing objectives from a true citizen approach. Indeed, we can tend towards an abusive use of ecological marketing in the case where the company spends more money on its advertising campaigns than on its actions. This is called greenwashing.

Green Marketing Approach

Ecological marketing will take into consideration the product's life cycle in order to enter into an ecodesign approach. Thus, the company will implement a quantitative ecodesign that can correspond to:

1 In the product development phase:

• a reduction in the weight of the materials
• the use of reusable and/or recyclable materials
• the implementation of a less polluting manufacturing process
• an energy saving

2 At the launch stage:

• a different presentation of the product on the shelf
• modification of the secondary packaging

3 At the maturity/consumption stage:

• environmental labels on the product to encourage consumers not to pollute

4 At the decline/destruction stage:

• The product is recoverable and/or reusable and/or recyclable

Regulations

Green marketing is regulated by standards and laws.

Standardizations

Standardization is governed by several organizations:

In France and Southern Europe: Association française de normalisation

In Germany and Northern Europe: Deutsches Institut für Normung

At European level: European Norm

In the United States: ASTM International

At the International level: International Organization for Standardization

There are environmental standards, such as those in the ISO 14000 Series of standards, that take environmental management into account. However, standards 14020, 14021 and 14025 are more specific to ecological marketing since they allow users of the products concerned to verify the compliance of the issues through reliable and valid information.

Legislations

In France, the Grenelle I and Grenelle II laws are taken into consideration. Indeed, three main areas of progress have been defined by Eco-Emballages, the National Association of Food Industries (ANIA) and the Institute of Links and Studies of Consumer Industries (ILEC) to support the Grenelle de l'environnement:

• prevention: by encouraging companies to engage in environmental initiatives and by stating their objectives to be achieved;
• increasing the recycling rate: by optimising the selective collection carried out by Eco-Emballages;
• Consumer information: by creating labels on packaging and/or environmental displays to raise awareness among consumers and citizens.

Environmental display

Communication tools are being developed to inform consumers about their purchasing criteria and help them to do the right recycling with environmental labelling. Indeed, although this display is still very wide and free in its range of information, the labels of some supermarkets such as "Leclerc or Casino" display more and more data on the recycling of the product concerned which highlight the eco-citizen actions to be taken, as well as the figures or statistics of environmental impacts such as CO2 emissions or Carbon Balance, or the quantity of energy that can be emitted in the case of incineration.

The main purpose of this "display

environmental" is first and foremost to display the environmental impacts generated by the life cycle of a consumer product. In addition, it is important to know that this means of communication can very well extend to other goods or services, such as mobile telephony for example.

Labelling

On many products, consumers find the presence of labels. These are not, in all cases, a sign of quality. A distinction should be made between official quality labels and other labels. Indeed, there are private labels and self-declarations that do not give rise to any control by a third party. ISO 14020 (on environmental labels and declarations) and ISO 14021 (on environmental markings) were created to provide a framework for this activity and thus reduce the number of false declarations that would tend to mislead.

As far as ecological marketing is concerned, all existing labels such as the Ecolabel and the European Ecolabel, which include products and services claiming to be environmentally friendly, are of a private type and awarded by organisations subject to compliance with their criteria and payment of fees.