Green Marketing

1147 Words3 Pages

In today’s day and age, everyone is concerned about the environment. Our society is increasingly encouraged to “go green,” to do our part in making the world a cleaner, more eco-friendly place. Green marketing is one major strategy being used to promote such efforts, but is it effective? There is some debate about this concept, including the history of green marketing, the problems with green marketing so far, the effectiveness of marketing schemes like Sunchips and Toyota, and the strategies that could be used to increase the ability of green marketing. While protecting our planet is a noble concept, its execution seems to be a little vague. Of all the aspects concerning green marketing, one thing is clear: our planet still has a long way to go if we want to go green.

Green marketing is defined as a trend in business where companies create an image of themselves as an environmentally friendly organization in order to gain favor with environmentally conscious customers (Rottkamp 1). First started in the 1980s, green marketing emerged as a strategy to endorse products that were said to be good for the environment. It began with the creation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reports to examine the habits of companies so that it could be determined who was conducting business in a more environmentally-friendly way (McClendon 1). Additionally, it is usually used to promote awareness and encourage consumers to adopt habits that are better for the environment. While this movement has gained some popularity in recent years, it is still not a major aspect in large corporations. Nonetheless, many businesses have attempted to “go green.”

It seems, in recent years particularly, that several companies have begun to embrace the gr...

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