Going green across the World

Concern for environmental damage caused by industries' pollution has reached fever pitch globally.Proactive waste management systems practiced today are still in the“end-of-the-pipe”phase.They need to move beyond recycling to work at minimizing waste generation.This can be done by revisiting the entire production processes of different industries.Worldwide, companies are waking up to the fact that the only sustainable path to the future is the observance of the zero emissions doctrine. As a new paradigm,zero waste has to be embraced with a zeal that goes beyond recycling waste.At the basic level,it would mean that the manufacturer takes back some part of the product for reuse. The significant barriers to zero-waste drive are evident.If there was resistance to setting up effluent treatment plants in the early 1990s,radical shifts in today's production process are bound to face stronger resistance. The only answer to all this is that polluting industries are inefficient,as research will show.These industries have a short lease on life if they continue down this path.Consumers are already bearing the costs of pollution;they just might be willing to share the price of protection. Governments could subsidize this,but at a cost to the company in terms of higher taxes.And most of all,zero emission would allow companies the opportunity to save costs in the long term. By Editor     

Agricultural income grows as farms go ＂green＂

China＇s National Audit Office （NAO） is carrying out a nationwide auit of the new rural cooperative medical care system and its accounts, the NAO said on June 7     

UNEP lauds China＇s contribution to green economic development

The United Nations Environment Programme （UNEP） has hailed China＇s contribution to the promotion of bio-diver- sity and green economic development.     

When does green advertising work? The moderating role of product type

Using environmental appeals to promote products is a popular marketing technique. However, little is known about how the effectiveness of green appeals varies across different product categories. The purpose of this study is to examine whether and to what extent green appeals in advertising are effective and how that effectiveness differs between products with more versus less environmental impact. Using the theoretical frameworks of ad-product fit hypothesis, our two product types (more harmful vs. less harmful) × two appeal types (green appeal vs. non-green appeal) experiment shows that ads with a green appeal are more effective for more-harmful products, whereas for less-harmful products, there is no significant difference between a green and a non-green appeal. Furthermore, cognitive response was found to mediate the interaction effect of green appeal and product type on ad persuasiveness. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Creating environmental knowledge through ‘green communities’ in the Spanish pharmaceutical industry

Using a knowledge-based perspective, the goal of this article is to demonstrate the relevance of environmental knowledge (EK) in the creation of customer capital (CC) and explore how organizations can create such a type of knowledge via ‘green communities’. We first describe the nature of such communities. We validate the relationships between CC and EK through an empirical investigation of 225 sellers (front-line contact people) in the Spanish pharmaceutical industry. This empirical study also suggests the development of ‘green’ communities, and shows how they can facilitate the emergence, retention, and transfer of the EK via customer relations.     

China＇s Spring Airlines gets green light for int＇l expansion

Cargoitalia - Italy＇s new all- cargo carrier - has successfully performed its first commercial flight since its re-formation under new management and ownership. The flight took place just three days after the airline received its AOC.     

Measuring Generation Y consumers’ perceptions of green practices at Starbucks: An IPA analysis

Following the trend of sustainability, many organizations in the restaurant industry have considered this movement as an opportunity and have started to “go green.” In this study, we analyzed Starbucks, the American global coffeehouse chain. Through an importance-performance analysis, we investigated the gap between the importance assigned by customers to a set of green practices that can be implemented by restaurants and their perception of Starbucks’ performance. The results suggest that, by making some green practices visible to their customers, Starbucks is creating the perception that the company is performing well in several other “green” areas.     

Research on the influencing factors of consumers’ green purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era

The severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world has caused consumers to think about environmental issues. Although green products are very important to environmental sustainability, the factors that influence consumers' purchase behavior of green products is unclear. This study aims to explore the impact mechanism of social media marketing on consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study constructs an extended TPB model to understand the influencing factors of Chinese consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. The empirical results of 489 questionnaires show that social media marketing, product knowledge and crisis awareness have a direct or indirect positive influence on purchase intentions. Perceived behavioral control and intentions have positive effects on behavior. The attribution of responsibility facilitates the relationship between intentions and behaviors. The results have important implications for enterprises’ sustainability strategies and provide a framework for investigating green buying behaviors in Chinese culture in the post-pandemic era.     

Preference for green packaging in consumer product choices – Do consumers care?

In this paper, consumer environmental choice is studied by analysing the relative importance of green packaging when compared with other relevant product attributes. The empirical study is based on a choice‐based conjoint analysis of preferences for functional drink products of a sample of 330 consumers using these products. Our choice‐based approach on environmental behaviour brings new insights to previous research, which predominantly relies on attitude models. Results indicate that consumers differ in their preferences for packaging, brand, price and convenience of use of daily products. In addition, various distinctive consumer segments can be identified on the market. Contrary to several previous studies, we found that the largest consumer segment, one‐third of consumers, favoured environmentally labelled packaging as the most important criteria in their choice. The findings emphasize the increasing importance of ethical and environmental dimension in product choices. We also propose that the attention in environmental consumer research should be shifted from general attitude studies towards the study of actual product choices.     

Designing ‘green’ vendor rating systems for the assessment of a supplier's environmental performance

In the last few years ‘green’ movements, institutions and governments have forced many companies to improve their environmental performance. As a consequence of this growing interest in the environment, many firms established integrated relationships with their suppliers to design new ‘green’ products. Unfortunately, no model has been suggested to support the decision-maker in the selection of the most effective supplier from an environmental viewpoint. Hence, the objective of the paper is to design a conceptual approach that first identifies measures for assessing a supplier's environmental performance and, secondly, suggests effective techniques for developing the supplier selection procedure according to an environmental viewpoint.     

Internal brand commitment,a multi-dimensional construct? Case study evidence within a collaborative independent retail network context

Commitment and other relational constructs have predominantly been examined within the organisational studies literature, and in more recent times within the relationship marketing literature, but have been largely neglected within the retail and branding literatures. There is little empirical evidence of commitment as a multi-dimensional construct within the marketing domain. Brand commitment studies have largely adopted an external consumer-based perspective, with little attention afforded to internal brand commitment, and the dimensionality of the construct. This study addresses this deficit, and aims to explore the dimensionality of the internal brand commitment construct within the business-to-business context of a collaborative independent retail network. A qualitative case study methodology is adopted based primarily on interviews with owner-managers. The study provides empirical evidence of the multi-dimensionality of the internal brand commitment construct, with both attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. Although the importance of internal branding has been acknowledged for service sector organisations, this is the first empirical evidence to document the complexity of internal brand commitment in a retail context. The study concludes that while calculative commitment builds organisational commitment, internal brand commitment requires an affective dimension, which leads to what can be interpreted as brand citizenship behaviour and/or conceptualised as the formation of a brand community.     

Regulations on auto financial company have been issued It is another green light for the recombination of auto industy

On October 3, China Banking Supervision Commission issued the “ Regulations on auto financial company,” and they began to be implemented on thesame day. This issued “ Regulations ” had begun to be drafted since the second half of 2001, and were completed on the basis of the revised edition which was announced to the public on October 8, 2002.