Download Green Marketing — Inevitable Choice for Winning the Competition

Green Marketing — Inevitable Choice for Winning the Competition
ZHANG Hong-shan
Henan University of Science & Technology P.R.China, 471003
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Abstract: The article holds that green marketing in our country has met with many problems at present.
On one hand, the consumers’ green consciousness in China is still at “the initial stage” compared with
the developed countries; on the other hand, most enterprises just take passive measures to improve green
marketing so its marketing combination strategies do not coincide with the green marketing.
Furthermore, government mainly adopts economical or administrative methods to protect the
environment. As a result, such problems as the power or the order instead of law taking effect, the law
being neglected and the difficulties in enforcing the law exist more in the course of the law enforcement.
The article notes that, in order to improve green marketing, enterprises should form the green marketing
idea, collect the green information, develop the green product, take the green packing seriously, set up
the green price, implement the green retails and the green promotion, take the green symbolization and
carry out the green management.
Key Words: green marketing sustainable development green management
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1 Introduction
As the 21st century is “green century”, people show more and more concern to the harmonious
existence between nature and human beings. Environment-protecting has become a fashion in economic
activities, consequently green marketing stands out and grows as the conspicuous trend at the new
century marketing, it is the important content for the sustainable development of modern enterprise.
2 Characteristics of green marketing —— harmonious co-existence between
nature and human beings
Green marketing, refers to the fact that an enterprise should highlight green in their marketing
activities, that is, to emphasize on the protection of ecological environment, to promote the coordinated
development between economy and environment. It is a process of planning and implementing covering
price-fixing, distribution and promotion for its products in order to realize the interest unification among
the enterprise itself, consumers, society and ecology.
Green marketing is the concept-extension of traditional marketing, not only containing the common
characteristics of general marketing, but also its own special features. It is more advanced, reasonable
compared to the traditional ones with advantage of higher applicability, in addition, it is a kind of
positive operation style, permeated with the philosophy of moral operation, showing completely new
contents, embodied as follows:
Firstly, the precondition for the emergence of green marketing is the awaking and green conscience
of consumers and the appearance of green consuming, which targets at the sustainable development of
human society.
Secondly green marketing is required not only to satisfy customers’ demands, but also to make
contributions to society, that is, to treat customers as the objectives of multiple demands including
consuming demands.
Thirdly, features of green marketing lies in an enterprise’s aspiration for harmonious development
between human beings and nature by emulation of the harmonious mechanism in nature under the
coordinated efforts of governments and society in the marketing economy.
Fourthly, green marketing puts focus on the unification of short-term interests and long-term
interests among companies, consumers and the society, and have an eye on the global environment
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regardless of boundaries from countries and regions. [1]
3 The burgeoning of green marketing – the age’s trend
The global environment has deteriorated along with the economic development. Take China as an
example, 80% sewage has been drained into rivers without treatment, giving rise to over 13% rivers
being polluted across the country, over 90% cities suffering from serious water pollutions. 47% of urban
areas are suffering from noise pollution. Various kinds of industrial solid wastes and consumer wastes
can be as high as 750million tons annually while the total accumulation adds up to over 7 billion tons. In
accordance with statistics, each year witnesses an economic loss around RMB200 billion caused by
environmental pollution. Deterioration of environment has aroused high attentions of people and
governments of all countries.
3.1 Social sustainable development strategy calls for green marketing
Western countries put forward sustainable development issue at the 1970s while the 1980s was
called rising decade for Environment-protection, a decade when the environmental protection awareness
was set up gradually. The 1990s was typically labeled as action decade for Environment-protection. Up
to today, countries all around the world, especially those economic developed countries have
successively worked out the strategies of issuing environmental protection mark and implementing
environmental protection awareness.
The implementation of sustainable development strategy, from the point of macro economy,
requires governments to lay great store on the formulation and implementation of the general goal,
guideline and specific measures, however from the perspective of micro economy, it requires enterprises
of all industries to integrate their marketing activities with the development of natural environment and
social environment, in an effort to make enterprise’s marketing activities beneficial for the favorable
cycle of environment, that is, demanding enterprise to conduct their green marketing activities from the
perspective of sustainable development strategy. [2]
3.2 Green consumption gives impetus to green marketing
Green marketing emerged under the impetus of global green consumption. The reasons that
consumers tend to incline green consumption stems from two factors, one is consumers have realized
while economic development does great good to consumers’ lives, resulting in adverse natural and social
circumstances, which in turn directly affects the living quality and living styles and people’s health,
therefore, people are in urgent need of treating the environmental pollution, demanding enterprises to
stop manufacturing products harmful to environment and health. The other is social economic
development has improved people’s incomes at a great margin so they can afford to require high-quality
life environment and consumption, namely, green consumption.
Under today’s circumstances when environmental protection becomes more and more important,
public’s focus on environmental protection will naturally turn to enterprise’s actions on environmental
protection. As a result, fluorine-free refrigerator, washing powder without phosphorus, lead-free
gasoline, green vegetable etc. all are welcome products. The companies operating these products have
set up good images to the public, valuable and intangible assets. These competitive advantages will do
help to enterprise’s continued development.
3.3 Green marketing is the most effective way to deal with green barrier
Green Barrier refers to the trade barriers set up by the import country’s government who attempts
to impose restrictions on imports and issues complicated environmental protection laws and regulations
by formulating strict standards on environmental technology, and adopting trivial procedures on
checking and approving import commodity under the excuse of protecting ecological environment,
natural resources, human and animal’s health.
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Practice has testified green marketing is the most effective weapon to cope with green barrier. The
green marketing would make trade barrier useless through acquiring green certification authorized by
international relevant organizations and have access to target market successfully whatever the target
country intends to do either out of environmental protection or trade protection consideration. Haier
Group passed ISO14000 and was granted the Green Mark Certificate at the beginning of 1990s which
helped it achieve increase in export and secured the position of national number one exporter and Asian
number one exporter to Germany at refrigerator.
3.4 Green marketing will facilitate an organization to discover new market opportunity and to
improve its competitiveness
Green consumption spurred the emergence of the most promising green industry with an excellent
market opportunity and abundant profits for companies. Many enterprises have seen the opportunity,
actively participating in green marketing and engaging in green production.
Green marketing is the most powerful weapon for an organization to defeat its competitors because:
the practitioner is able to provide the products and services beneficial for consumers’ health and the
environment so as to gain their favors and set up a good public image and maintain good relations with
consumers, governments and various aspects. The above advantages will help distinguish it from
competitors and occupy a superior position.
4 The spread of green marketing – a heavy responsibility in years to come
Despite the fact that the implementation of green marketing is feasible in theory in China, however,
the production and sale of green products are in the bud. Many problems are to be solved, in specific:
4.1 From the perspective of consumers, the green awareness of Chinese consumers are quite low
compared with those of developed countries
Due to the comparative low consumption level as a whole in China and insufficient promotion
activities to green products from the governments, many consumers at present haven’t formed the
awareness to associate environment-protection with their own interests, not mention of their effective
supervision to enterprises.
At the beginning of 2003, Environment-Friendly Product Certification Committee of China
launched a large scale investigation on Public Green Consumption. The result showed that 27%
consumers are ignorant of green products completely, 58% consumers are able to discern part green
products, and merely 15% consumers can distinct the true green products from false ones.
Green price has impact on green consumption as well. The Secretary Division of
Environment-Friendly Product Certification Committee of China conducted surveys to consumers in
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu respectively, which showed that only less than 8%
consumers were willing to pay higher price for environment-friendly products. The survey conducted in
Shanghai showed that around one fifth citizens there regarded that green products are unacceptably
expensive. Obviously there is a long way to go for China to catch up with developed countries as far as
green consumption is concerned.
4.2 From the perspective of an organization, their marketing complex is incongruous with green
marketing as most enterprises conducting green marketing are out of passive, instead of proactive
choice
Green marketing poses new challenges to Chinese marketing complex. Due to backward
operational styles, most enterprises are not conscious of the impact power of green storm but the green
wave is expanding. To some enterprises having implemented green marketing, they mingle the green
products with other non-green products to sell due to lacking good sales network, as a result consumers
will have some difficulties to choose, in addition, the price difference between green and non-green
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products is subtle, which leaves meager profits for the operators, another unfavorable and important
factor hindering the spread of green marketing.
Some enterprises treat green marketing as government’s responsibility, instead of the market and
the organization to bear, thinking that green marketing is the business non-profitable and money-losing.
4.3 From the perspective of government, they generally resort to economic or administrative
measures to protect environment. In reality, there is a phenomenon that power and words from
government officials speak louder than laws.
There is a lack of restrictive systems from government to the negative influences non-green
consumption cause. Though at the production field, governments have exerted strict policies like closing
the factory, stopping production and transferring the business to some seriously polluting enterprises, in
the consuming field, there are no relevant laws and regulations to intervene. For a long time, standards
of some economic measures are obscure. Administrative interventions can’t meet the demands of market
economy. At the same time, governments didn’t carry out strict investigations into the
environment–harmful enterprises according to relevant laws. Without the outside pressure, enterprise
won’t automatically carry out green marketing, leading to government’s inability to execute macro
control on green marketing from the objective point.
5 Strategy of green marketing – the key to success
The implementation of green marketing will bring organizations with development opportunity and
higher profits, competitive advantages and promising prospects, all the essentials for an organization’s
long term growth. Of course, to successfully conduct green marketing, a set of powerful strategies will
be necessary.
5.1 Establish green marketing concept.
Executives at all levels of the enterprise should pay high attention to environmental protection
issues and try to act as follows to reduce elements unfavorable for environmental protection at the
manufacturing of products and development of technology; to control pollution as low as possible at the
process of delivering products to consumers; to take the reduction of the remnants of packages into
consideration at the process of design; to make the soft services of all products conform to the principle
of resource-saving and pollution-reducing. [3]
：
5.2 Collect green information.
Green information refers to various information, data and materials relating to green marketing
under certain conditions. It covers various kinds like production, technology, consumption, competition,
laws and regulations, culture, economy, market scale and organizations etc. Only when organizations
can effectively use such kinds of information, can they successfully carry out green marketing activities.
In view of the popular trend of drinking pure natural juice at developed countries in recent years,
Beijing Huabang Food Co., Ltd have taken many standards like pollution-free, sediment-free and
low-bacteria containing into consideration from the selection of address, advanced production process to
ingredients, meanwhile, reserving all nutritious factors of the fresh fruits, thus making drinking fruit
have the same health-care effect with eating fruit, gaining popularity among consumers, especially old
people and children.
5.3 Develop green products.
Green products refer to products doing little harm to environment or conforming to relevant
stipulations conducive to recycling of resources from production, use to recycling treatment. This is the
supportive point for an enterprise to implement green consumption. Some Chinese smart entrepreneurs
have engaged in developing green products. Apart from Haier refrigerator, some organizations have
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introduced consumption fashion like green, environment-friendly and healthy into the development and
production after they carefully studied the demanding changes of market along with China’s entry into
WTO. Presently five down-padded anorak brands Bosideng, Xuezhongfei, Kangbo, Bingjie and Bingfei
have entered overseas markets successfully contributing to their green products under the conditions that
Chinese textile are facing export crisis.
The production of green products must be based on harm-free green resources and energy,
specifically, to adopt new technology and equipment, to save energy and resources, to take use of scraps
and waste materials comprehensively, in an effort to improve the use ratio of resources and reduce the
wastage of earth resources. For example, French RENAULT designed a kind of car, all of its wastes can
be recovered after it is abandoned so the waste will be useful materials instead of unrecoverable
garbage.
5.4 Give priority to green package.
Green package means the action of designing package and decorations will take the impacts of the
remnants on environment into consideration, using recyclable or dissolvable materials.
According to relevant reports that the loss caused by package in export reaches around 10% of the
total value, quite a part of which contributes to package below the green package standard. So
organizations are required to change their traditional concept on packages, namely, to turn focus from
stimulating purchase to environment protection and resource savings. The styles of simple package,
recoverable package and multi-functional package are recommendable.
According to statistics China produces 1.2 billion pieces of shirts annually, among which 800
million pieces need to be packaged with box, equivalent to around 1,680,000 trees. Shanghai Hualian
has launched the advertisement of reducing one box of package, reserving a patch of forest, in an
attempt to encourage people to buy shirts without packages. In order to encourage consumers to buy
more non-package shirts, Hualian Market promises that it will send one bottle of Collar Cleansing
Liquor freely to consumers who buy non-package shirts.
5.5 Work out green price.
When an organization makes its price, it should keep in mind the concept that Pollution-maker pays
the price, Environment isn’t free, and Resource is used economically. The organization can write the
expense on environmental protection into cost to formulate the green cost and consist of part of the
green price.
Take the green food as an example. Finland’s government permits the price of green food can be
30% higher than those of non-green food while Japanese government approves of 20% higher. If the
manufacturer can keep expanding the production scale and carry out concentrated operation, it is
possible to bring down the price of green food. What’s more, the price of green food can be cut down
from other aspects like lowering cost by economizing the materials used for production and package.
5.6 Implement green distribution.
The manufacturer can arrange the distribution channels and methods in multiple ways according to
the peculiar features of green food.
First is it can select to cooperate with agents who care about environmental protection and enjoy
good credits among consumers so to facilitate it to introduce its green products to consumers and set up
a good public image.
Second is to establish outlets or counters decorated with marks returning to nature, presenting
series of products to cause group effect so as to help consumers identify and buy.
Third is an organization should set up reasonable supply-distribution center and simplify the
systems and links, and use vehicles lead-free, equipped with pollution-control device and energy saving.
Fourth is to establish a global sales network. An organization’s efforts should not be limited to the
domestic market. Apart from the outlets established at domestic middle and large cities so as to improve
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its coverage of market constantly, an organization is suggested to open transport routes leading to
overseas market, set up foreign office and establish outlets there in an effort to increase its competitive
competence for green products.
Fifth is to take care that the non-green products the agents deal do not conflict with the green
products, better complementary with the green products so the agent will whole-heartedly recommend
the products to consumers.
5.7 Carry out green promotion.
In the promotion activities, green advertisement, green PR, and green sales persons play very
important roles as it different from the traditional concept on advertisement, PR and sales persons.
First is the green sales persons. As most green products are new and strange to most consumers,
facing challenges to be accepted so the sales person can directly introduce the product’s function, usage
method and its environment-friendly characteristics to consumers and answer their questions.
Second is the green advertisement. Compared with other ads, green ads put more emphasis on
green features, the organization’s green image in order to transfer the green information to consumers
and spur the demands.
Third is green PR. Green PR is the important channel for the organization and its products to set up
the green images. In green marketing activities, the organization is expected to show its efforts in green
field through good public relations and set up good image among consumers. The green public relations
will be able to more directly and more extensively pass the green information to the niche market where
the advertisement can’t reach and can achieve the effect of strengthening the organization’s
competitiveness.
5.8. Get the green mark.
Green mark, also named environmental protection mark, is the mark indicating that the product
conforms to special standards on environmental protection throughout its life cycle from production, to
use to the final recovery. The green mark is credited as the green visa leading to the market. To acquire
the green mark through green certification is regarded as the key section for an organization to
implement green marketing. Only by acquiring the green market, can the organization gain consumers’
trusts and break through the green trade barrier set by foreign countries. Presently if an organization
passes ISO14000, it can gain external recognition, meaning it gets the green visa leading to the overseas
market as well.[4]
5.9 Carry out green management.
Green management means to incorporate the ideas of environmental protection into the
organization’s operations and management, summarized as 5R principles, that is, Research, Reduce,
Reuse, Recycle and Rescue. Research means to integrate environmental protection into the
organization’s decision-making process, to pay high attention to the study of its environmental strategy;
Reduce means to lower or eliminate the release of harmful wastes by adopting new technology and new
technical process; Reuse means to change the traditional products into green products, to actively apply
for the green mark; Recycle represents the recovery to discarded and old products so as to reach
recycled use; while Rescue stands for active participation to the community’s environmentally cleaning
events, advertisement on environmental protection to its employees and the public to set up a good
public image. [5]
As green will be the dominant color of 21st century, green industry will see a booming future.
Green products will be in leading place so green marketing will be the new challenges facing the
enterprises of the new age. For enterprises in China, green marketing will not only be the sharp weapon
for their competitiveness, but also the inevitable choice in order to fit the new trend and advance as the
age calls for.
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Reference
[1] J.Wu,S.X., Discussions on corporate green marketing strategy, Hebei Normal College of Technology
(Social science edition), June. Vol.3No.2, 2004, pp.95–98.
[2] J.Wang,J.L., Difficulties and solutions to corporate green marketing, Exploration, No.4,
2004,pp.38–39.
[3] J.Gu,L.J.&Wang,M., Strategies to green marketing in China at 21st century, Lanzhou Journal, No.1,
2003, pp.61–62.
[4] J.Ye,W.Y., Probes to the implementation of green marketing strategy, Market weekly. Study edition,
No. 3, 2005, pp.76–77.
[5] J.Li, C.Z., Major issues and solutions to corporate green marketing in China, Zhuzhou Industrial
College Journal, No. 3, 2004, pp.82–83.
Authors Brief: Zhang Hongshan, (1957 - ), male, Qixian Henan Province, associate professor of
Economics and Management College in Henan University of science and technology, Master student
teacher, engaged in the theory and applied research of marketing.
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