Marketing of Hybrid Cars



Marketing of Hybrid Cars

Marketing the Innovation

The attitude of the end-user toward an innovation is considered to be a crucial factor in the process of diffusion and adoption. Marketing is used to position a product in the market, to identify and create an image of innovation that attracts a potential group of early adopters. Solar panels, for example, have been marketed as high-tech gadgets, addressing a group of customers. Product innovation inevitably entails process innovation, such as the use of clean technologies, renewable energy sources, nonhazardous substances, and biodegradable materials. Environmental management systems help firms to reduce the environmental impact of products during production and consumption (DeCicco, 2000). Good housekeeping or eco-efficiency, that is, making efficient use of resources, is a well-known example of a cost-efficient form of environmental management.

Product and process innovation also involve a reconsideration of the resources used: labor, monetary, and physical resources. Including external costs, for example, by improving labor conditions and increasing eco-efficiency can lead to different investment decisions. Approaches such as design-for-environment or cradle-to-cradle are examples in which product and process innovations are intertwined from the start. The design includes the end of life of a product, after which it can be disassembled and the components reused. Experiments with industrial and demountable buildings have shown that a long lifetime of products, different economic lifetimes of components, the adversity of architects against standardization, and changing legitimate product requirements over time make it difficult to reuse components (Aoki, 2000). Changes of institutions and attitudes are needed to support the reuse of materials and components.

The environmental gains of innovation at the level of the product or service, including the way it is produced or delivered, are modest compared with the gains that can be made upstream in the manufacturing chain. For example, carbon dioxide compensation schemes for airline customers do not result in aircraft innovation. Studies of environmental innovation stress the need for innovation of the system that delivers products or services (Meijkamp, 2000).

Marketing Strategies

Social constructivism acknowledges the influence of groups of people on technology development. There is an interaction between technology and society. People can attribute different meanings to artifacts—human-made things—and they may value technology differently. This view also emphasizes that technology takes time to adapt to changing demands in society, or that society takes time to adapt to opportunities provided by new technologies. Developments in technology and society thus co evolved (DeCicco, 2000).

These two views can be recognized by the ways in which environmental innovation of products and systems is governed. Push strategies assume that the technological determinism in innovation creates demand and focuses on investing in research and development and in bringing a product to market. Pull strategies use market demands to direct research and development. In practice, environmental innovation is often a combination of push and pull. For example, a market demand for small, energy-efficient cars pulled the automobile industry to invest in these cars. Government can support this development with emission regulations and tax advantages for hybrid-car owners (Mulder, ...