The promotion of environmentally safe/ beneficial products, green marketing began in Europe in the early 1980's when specific products were identified as being harmful to the earth's atmosphere. As the result new "green" products were introduced that were less damaging to the environment. The concept caught on in the United States and has been gaining steadily ever since.

Green Marketing is also known as environmental marketing or sustainable marketing. Divergent aspect of green marketing includes ecologically safer products, recyclable and biodegradable packaging, energy efficient operations and better pollution controls. Advances produced from green marketing include packaging made from recycle paper, phosphate-free detergents, refillable containers for cleaning products and bottle using less plastic.

As today's consumer become more and more conscious of natural products, businesses are beginning to modify their own thoughts and behavior in an attempt to address the concerns of consumers. Green marketing is becoming more important to businesses because of consumers' genuine concerns about our limited resources on the earth. By implementing green marketing measures in order to save the earth's resources in productions, packaging and operations, businesses are showing consumers that they too share the same concern about environment, boosting their credibility. Government has also taken certain initiatives by making regulations relating to green marketing in order to protect the environment.

Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. It is the process of selling products and services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way .

Green marketing involves developing and promoting products and services that satisfy customers want and need for Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Convenience without having a detrimental impact on the environment. The Obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service's "greenness" as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly.

Importance Of Green Marketing

Since early 1990's,a major concern on ecological impact of industrial house on environment has been surfaced on marketplace. Not only the relations between human, organization and natural environment has been redefined, but the implication thereof are being interpreted, because of these, new perception are being formed or re-evaluated on issues like environmentally product, recycle ability , waste reduction, the cost associated with pollution and price value relationship of environmentalism. Pressure from various stakeholders, govt. environmentalists, NGO's consumer is placed on businesses, which in turn keep them under constant and relentless watch in their daily operations. A direct result can be seen in developing as well as in developed countries where government become more strict in imposing regulations to protect environment at the same time, the consumers of these countries are being more and more out spoken regarding their needs for environmentally friendly products, even though question remain on their willingness to pay higher premium for these products.

So in this era where consumer determine the fate of a company, green marketing imparts a proactive strategies to these companies to cater the market by imparting natural friendly product/ services which otherwise reduce or minimize detrimental impact on environment.

A green marketing approach in productive area promotes the integration of environmental issues on all corporate activities; from strategy formulation, planning re-engineering in production process and dealing with consumers. So to remain competitive within the challenge thrown by environment protectionists, the companies will have to find out the answer through their marketing strategies, product or services redesign, customer handling.

in this endeavour the companies go for new technologies for handling waste, sewage and air pollution; it can go for product standardization to ensure environmentally safe product; by providing truly natural product. In this regard companies should be concerned with what happens to a product during and after its useful life. Companies may manifest these concerns through experimentation with ways to reassess the product life stages.

Moreover, man has limited resources on the earth, with which she/he must attempt to provide for the worlds' unlimited wants. There is extensive debate as to whether the earth is a resource at man's disposal.. In market societies where there is "freedom of choice", it has generally been accepted that individuals and organizations have the right to attempt to have their wants satisfied. As firms face limited natural resources, they must develop new or alternative ways of satisfying these unlimited wants. Ultimately green marketing looks at how marketing activities utilize these limited resources, while satisfying consumers wants, both of individuals and industry, as well as achieving the selling organization's objectives.

Adoption Of Green Marketing

There are basically five reasons for which a marketer should go for the adoption of green marketing. They are -

* Opportunities or competitive advantage
* Corporate social responsibilities (CSR)
* Government pressure
* Competitive pressure
* Cost or profit issues

Green Code

G eneralise with care. Consumer behaviour will not necessarily be consistent across different product types, and particular market segment may respond to certain issues on green agenda but not others.

R emember the validity of piece of market research is not related to degree to which it support your preferred option.

E xplore the context from which the market research data comes. Be clear on the nature of sample used , the question asked the way in which the responses were recorded and time and place from where the responses come.

E nsure that where the market research is crossing international boundaries, that the terminology and interpretations remain consistent.

N eurality is important. Ensure that when you pose questions to consumers that they can made any responses without being made guilty or uncomfortable and ensure that your own preconceptions about green agenda are not encoded with in the questions.

Reference :

www.greenmarketing.net/stratergic.html
www.epa.qld.gov.au/sustainable_ industries
www.wmin.ac.uk/marketing research/marketing/greenmix.html
www.green-markets.org/context.htm
www.wikipedia.org