Greener Marketing: a Global Perspective - Term Paper Example

Green products are basically those products that consume fewer natural resources or utilize them more sustainably during manufacturing; the amount of environmental or toxic hazard contained in these products is negligible. Green products also require less energy when being manufactured and consume less energy as well (Green Procurement). As the idea behind the production of green products was to minimize the amount of waste material produced, they contained re-cycled material and could be recycled themselves.

Durability and affordability were two other charms of the green products (Leahy 2008, p. 14). Intelligent marketing by the corporate created an emotional connection between the consumers and the green products; the consumers feel that by purchasing and using green products they are contributing towards the safety of the environment and behaving like a responsible citizen of the world. They feel responsible not only for the environment but social considerations are also added to the list. The social considerations include the process involved in making the products as people boycotted some brands where child labor was involved, for instance, Nike.

Similarly, the consumers raised a hue and cry against the use of Styrofoam by McDonald’s. Styrofoam is an environmentally dangerous material; the people’s campaign against it forced McDonald's to give up the use of Styrofoam in 1990 (Campbell, MacKinnon and Stevens 2011). The changing consumer purchasing patterns has made many brands switch over to producing green products (Deloitte 2009, p. 1). To attract customers the brands use ‘go green’ label to add value to their products.

Solving environmental problems not only adds value to brands but also builds customer loyalty (Esty and Simmons 2011, p. 282). Hence this has proved to be a good marketing strategy as the consumers prefer to buy green products (Esty and Winston 2009).