Environmentally-responsible or "green" marketing is a business practice that takes into account consumer concerns about promoting preservation and conservation of the natural environment. Green marketing campaigns highlight the superior environmental protection characteristics of a company's products and services, whether those benefits take the form of reduced waste in packaging, increased energy efficiency in product use, or decreased release of toxic emissions and other pollutants in production. As the Encyclopedia of the Environment noted, marketers have responded to growing consumer demand for environment-friendly products in several ways: "by promoting the environmental attributes of their products; by introducing new products; and by redesigning existing products—all components of environmental marketing." Indeed, marketing campaigns touting the environmental ethics of companies and the environmental advantages of their products have proliferated in recent years.
Most observers agree that while some businesses engage in green marketing solely because such an emphasis will enable them to make a profit, other businesses conduct their operations in an environmentally-sensitive fashion because their owners and managers feel a responsibility to preserve the integrity of the natural environment even as they satisfy consumer needs and desires. Indeed, true green marketing emphasizes environmental stewardship. Environmental Marketing author Walter Coddington, for example, defined environmental marketing as "marketing activities that recognize environmental stewardship as a business development responsibility and business growth responsibility." Another analyst of green marketing, Greener Marketing editor Martin Charter, defined the practice as "a holistic and responsible strategic management process that identifies, anticipates, satisfies and fulfills stakeholder needs for a reasonable reward that does not adversely affect human or natural environmental well-being." Such interpretations expand on the traditional understanding of business's responsibilities and goals.
REACTIONS TO "GREEN CONSUMERISM"
A number of factors have caused business firms in some industries to incorporate an environmental ethic into their operations. The principal factor, of course, is the growing public awareness of the environmental degradation that has resulted as a consequence of the growth in population and natural resource consumption throughout the world during the last 50 years. The issue is particularly relevant in America, which accounts for fully one quarter of world consumption despite having only a small fraction of the world's population. This growing public awareness of environmental issues has brought with it a corresponding change in the buying decisions of a significant segment of American consumers. As the Encyclopedia of the Environment observed, "many consumers, and not just the most environmentally conscious, are seeking ways to lessen the environmental impacts of their personal buying decisions through the purchase and use of products and services perceived to be environmentally preferable."
Businesses took heed of this growth in "green consumerism," and new marketing campaigns were devised to reflect this new strain of thought among consumers. Companies with product lines that were created in an environmentally friendly fashion (i.e., with recycled products, comparatively low pollutant emissions, and so on) quickly learned to shape their marketing message to highlight such efforts and to reach those customers most likely to appreciate those efforts (an advertisement highlighting a company's recycling efforts, for instance, is more likely to appear in an outdoor/nature magazine than a general interest periodical).
Ironically, studies have shown that the most environmentally aware consumers are also the ones most likely to view green claims of companies with skepticism. As George M. Zinkhan and Les Carlson wrote in the Journal of Advertising, "green consumers are the very segment most likely to distrust advertisers and are quite likely to pursue behaviors and activities that confound business people." Corporate reputation, then, has emerged as a tremendously important factor in reaching and keeping these consumers. A company that touts its sponsorship of an outdoor oriented event or utilizes nature scenery in its advertising, but also engages in practices harmful to the environment, is unlikely to gain a significant portion of the green consumer market. Of course, such tactics are sometimes effective in reaching less informed sectors of the marketplace.
Environmental or green marketing differs from other forms of advertising in some fairly fundamental ways. The Encyclopedia of the Environment summarized the most striking differences effectively: "First, unlike, price, quality, and other features, the environmental impacts of a product are not always apparent and may not affect the purchaser directly. T