BEING GREEN

Advertising Green

Advertising Green

Introduction

What has happened to “green marketing”? In these early years of the new millennium, it is now some 18 years on from the Brundtland Report and the “euphoric” discovery of the environment by marketing practitioners and academics. Over those years, we have seen much research, many product launches and campaigns, and many books, papers and conferences. Despite all this, green marketing gives the impression of having significantly underachieved. Even to the most casual observer, the 1990s largely disappointed in their billing as the decade that would precipitate a “green revolution” in marketing. That decade began with eminently hopeful forecasts about the emergence of a “green tide” (Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990) of consumers and new products. Yet, this has clearly not materialised as expected. Instead, consumers have become disillusioned; many of the groundbreaking green products produced by specialist firms have left the market; the dramatic growth in green product introductions at the beginning of the 1990s has subsided; and companies have become cautious about launching environmentally-based communications campaigns for fear of being accused of “green washing”.

In this conceptual study, we seek to review and understand the green marketing story with reference to a landmark paper published 20 years ago in a leading UK academic marketing journal, the Journal of Marketing Management. Entitled, “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried?” (King, 1985).

Rise and Stumble of Green Marketing

Despite some attention in the 1970s, it was really only in the late 1980s that the idea of green marketing emerged. Early academic treatments of green marketing spoke of the rapid increase in green consumerism at this time as heralding a dramatic and inevitable shift in consumption towards greener products (Prothero, 1990; Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990). Like any (relatively) new marketing phenomena, it was soon the subject of a great deal of market research. Much survey evidence from reputable research bodies was cited as identifying heightened environmental awareness, a growing consumer interest in green products, and a pronounced willingness to pay for green features (Roper Organization, 1990; Mintel, 1991; Worcester, 1993). Practical evidence for this came in the form of the highly effective global consumer boycott of CFC-driven aerosols, and the international success of publications such as The Green Consumer Guide (Elkington and Hailes, 1988). There were two key responses to this: one was a burst of corporate activity in the area of green marketing; the other was an upsurge in green business research and writing amongst academics.

Corporate interest in green marketing was indicated by early market research findings suggesting major changes and innovations. Vandermerwe and Oliff's (1990) survey found that 92 per cent of European multinationals claimed to have changed their products in response to green concerns, and 85 per cent claimed to have changed their production systems. Green product introductions in the US more than doubled to 11.4 per cent of all new household products between 1989 and 1990, and continued to grow to 13.4 per cent in 1991 (Ottman, ...