Green consumer market segmentation: empirical findings from Portugal

Concern with environmental degradation has led to a new segment of consumers: the green or ecological consumers. Marketers must pay special attention to the needs of this segment. The growing concern with the environment, increased competition and greater selectiveness and demands of consumers represent an immediate challenge for green marketing. This paper aims to identify distinct market segments based on several environmental variables. It also investigates individuals' behaviours and perceptions about green consumerism. The used methodology was the collection of primary information through a direct survey. The study covered 887 Portuguese consumers, aged over 18. The results show that certain environmental and demographic variables are significant in differentiating between the ‘greener’ consumer group and the other segments. Portuguese consumers, despite their support for policies designed to improve the environment, do not always translate their concerns into environmentally friendly actions. Possible implications of these results for firms' marketing strategies are also discussed.     

商业秘密禁令保护之源流与功能

禁令制度起源于英国,成熟于美国商业秘密法,它是衡平法保护商业秘密的重要手段。禁令主要可分为临时禁令、初步禁令和终局禁令三类,它们各有其不同的适用条件。禁令对相关方的利益影响重大,因此在发布禁令时要以利益平衡为原则,注意其范围和时间限制,以激励和促进创新。     

消费者品牌转换行为促成机制构建

随着我国经济的快速增长,消费者逐渐呈现出由非绿色品牌向绿色品牌转换的消费趋势。为了更好地提高绿色营销绩效,须从基本因素、强化因素、深化因素三个层面,分析和研究消费者绿色品牌转换过程影响因素的作用,在此基础上从绿色产品生产控制、企业绿色产品宣传推广、绿色产品监督管理、绿色环保的社会宣传等方面出发,构建绿色营销下的消费者品牌转换促成机制,以期望规范企业绿色营销活动,为企业更好地实施绿色营销战略提出建议。     

Green Marketing and the Concern over the Environment: Measuring Environmental Consciousness of Jordanian Consumers

SUMMARY

The purpose of this article is to explore the attitudes of Jordanian consumers regarding both their current environmental consciousness and their willingness to adopt environmentally friendly consumption behavior. The article is based on an empirical investigation of consumer attitudes for a sample of 303 university students drawn from Jordanian universities, using a drop-off method. The article concludes that Jordanian consumers were, generally, concerned about the environment, as they demonstrated reasonably high levels of environmental consciousness relating to various environmental issues. However, this pro-environmental attitude was not sufficient to turn good intentions into actual buying actions, possibly due to several factors, such as loyalty to traditional products and weak credibility of “green” claims. The article stresses the need to link consumers' good intentions to actual buying behavior through a green marketing strategy, which focuses on the unique characteristics of green products and how they impact the environment, within the cultural context of the Jordanian consumer. Over time, we hope that these efforts can lead to a culture of green consumerism within a framework of environmental responsibility.     

Segmenting Green Consumers in the United States: Implications for Green Marketing

The purpose of the current study was to segment U.S. consumers into four distinct clusters based on their beliefs and motives regarding pro-environmental consumer behavior. Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults from Experian Simmons (N = 22,348), this study revealed that: (a) there are four clusters of consumers in the United States with a unique set of beliefs and motives regarding consumer environmentalism; (b) the clusters have distinct demographic and media usage profiles; and (c) the groups have varying responses to the industry's initiatives to protect the environment. Implications of the research are discussed in light of developing message and media strategies for green marketing.     

Gender differences in Egyptian consumers’ green purchase behaviour: the effects of environmental knowledge,concern and attitude

This study investigates the influence of three cognitive and attitudinal factors on gender differences in green purchase behaviour. Using a large sample size (n = 1093), a survey has been developed and administered across Egypt. The findings from the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) confirm the influence of consumers’ ecological knowledge, concern and attitude on gender differences in green purchase behaviour. Consistent with previous studies, this study found that women appeared to be less aware of environmental issues compared with men. However, contrary to other studies conducted in the West, men showed more environmental concern and more positive outlook towards green purchase compared with women. The study discusses how the present findings may help policy makers and marketers alike to fine‐tune their environmental and marketing programmes.     

The Development and Testing of a Measure of Skepticism Toward Environmental Claims in Marketers' Communications

Marketers' claims about the environmental effects of products and their packaging are becoming more pervasive. Consumer organizations, government, and marketers have long realized that consumers receive such claims with some degree of skepticism. An investigation of how consumer skepticism affects the response to “green” marketing claims would be facilitated by a reliable and valid measure of skepticism. This paper describes a two-stage research project and the resulting four-item measure of skepticism toward environmental claims made in advertising and on packages. The scale has acceptable levels of reliability and validity.     

Effects of functional green advertising on self and others

This study examines the effects of a functional green advertising promoting the environmental advantages of a product. It presents the results of three experiments designed to (a) explore consumers’ perceptions of a functional green ad's effects on themselves and others, (b) determine how those perceptions are influenced by consumer environmental concern, and (c) examine how individualism–collectivism relates to self–other effect perceptions. Findings indicate that (a) consumers believe that functional green advertising exerts a stronger influence on others’ purchase decisions than on their own purchase decisions; (b) the self–other difference is more salient among consumers with high environmental concern; (c) in the individualistic culture, the perceived effectiveness on self, not on others, predicts consumers’ support for the regulation of functional green ads, while this effect is reversed when consumers are in collectivistic cultures. The study's findings extend several lines of research, including the literature on green advertising and the third‐person effect.     

Identifying the critical factors of customer behavior: An integration perspective of marketing strategy and components of attitudes

The purpose of this empirical study is to operationalize the relationship of green marketing's influence on consumer attitudes via the mediating role of marketing mix towards green products to validate the proposed research model in the Taiwanese context of explaining consumers' willingness to be environmentally friendly. The model is based on structural equation modeling (SEM) from data collected from 977 online consumers. The findings revealed that green consumption intention was significantly and indirectly driven by attitude to green products. Additionally, the effect of perceived quality on marketing mix and consumer willingness in environmental concern is both significant and positive. However, when a restaurant has high consumer social responsibility (CnSR) for marketing mix, the consumer attitudes of cognitive, affective, and behavioral model (C-A-B model) is less effective. These findings have contributed to the revival of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and offer a comprehensive understanding of consumer attitude, consumer social responsibility, marketing mix and perceived quality impact that a restaurant has on the ability to raise consumer willingness to purchase green products or food. We provides valuable suggestions to marketers to design from the perspective of green marketing policies and strategies in order to accommodate Taiwan's indigenous green restaurants.     

绿色消费驱动下的绿色营销策略及其启示

绿色消费是绿色营销产生和发展的时代基础和思想基础,绿色营销能有效引导和促进绿色消费。文章基于绿色消费和绿色营销的互动发展机制,从消费者感知效力、利他主义、自由主义和环境保护意识四个细分变量分析了绿色消费行为,揭示了其间隐含的营销策略启示。     

Promoting green buildings: Do Chinese consumers care about green building enhancements?

This paper explores sustainability‐related choices about buildings by analysing how consumers rated the relative importance of various attributes of conventional and green buildings. It also analyses how consumers judge environmental and health‐oriented improvements in green buildings. Unlike previous studies, this research applied conjoint analysis to explore the green building market at the consumer's level by regarding green buildings as nondurable green products and services. We used a survey to gather consumer preferences about several green building hotel models which partly applied green energy, modern wood structures and improved indoor environmental quality (IEQ). In total, 341 consumers participated the survey in two of China's largest cities: Beijing and Shanghai. The results revealed that green energy was the most preferred attribute of green buildings, exerting an even stronger overall effect on consumer choice than price. Afterwards, we identified distinct consumer segments and determined the background characteristics of each segment based on the similarities in the preferences for each attribute. The largest consumer segment, consisting of younger consumers, ranked green energy as the most important criterion. However, an improved indoor environmental quality was generally not highly ranked, and individuals in the consumer segment, which included more older and female consumers, were more likely to reject modern wood structures. The results also revealed that higher‐income individuals were most concerned with price, and consumers with higher levels of education were willing to pay more to support green buildings.     

消费升级与黑龙江省绿色食品企业营销战略转型

随着消费者收入的持续提高,消费升级成为必然趋势。企业需要以终端和渠道导向为主向消费者导向为主的营销思路转变,完成企业营销渠道战略的转型。当前,黑龙江省绿色食品企业营销渠道面临着对消费者多样化需求的满足程度不够、产销脱节、缺乏对整体渠道的控制力等问题。在消费升级形势下,黑龙江省绿色食品企业的营销战略应向产销一体化渠道模式转型。产销一体化渠道模式能够促进企业的发展和农户增收,满足消费者对食品安全的要求和多样化需求。     

Green consumerism and the societal marketing concept: Marketing strategies for the 1990's

This paper examines the impact of these trends on the role of the marketing department in the J990's. Essentially, when the buying habits of consumers are being strangely influenced by green and other environmental issues, the paper argues that the marketing concept and subsequent strategies need to be rethought. The paper then imaginatively develops the concept of societal marketing within this framework, arguing for the need for a long term marketing perspective rather than the short term window dressing approach taken by many marketing departments.     

Perceived Greenwashing: The Effects of Green Marketing on Environmental and Product Perceptions

Many firms are striving to improve their environmental positions by presenting their environmental efforts to the public. To do so, they are applying green marketing strategies to help gain competitive advantage and appeal to ecologically conscious consumers. However, not all green marketing claims accurately reflect firms’ environmental conduct, and can be viewed as ‘greenwashing’. Greenwashing may not only affect a company’s profitability, but more importantly, result in ethical harm. Therefore, this research extends past greenwashing studies by examining additional influences on and outcomes of perceived greenwashing. To do so, we conducted two studies, an interview study with consumer product and consulting firms, as well as an experiment examining consumers interacting with a company website. For these studies, we used multiple methods, including interviews, questionnaires, and neurophysiological techniques. We found that perceived greenwashing relates not only to environmental and product perceptions, but also to consumers’ happiness while interacting with the website. We also found that website interactivity relates to perceived greenwashing, environmental and product perceptions, and to the amount of interaction with the website. We conclude by discussing managerial and ethical implications for research and practice.

     

Places as authentic consumption contexts

Consumers build social capital through purposeful consumer–place interactions. Airbnb claims that consumers want to “experience a place like [they] live there.” Previous research concentrates primarily on authenticity of objects, brands, and people, with limited development of place authenticity as a concept. But place authenticity represents an increasingly important marketing concept as consumers today, particularly millennials (Schulz, P. (2015, August 8). Not just millennials: Consumers want experiences, not things. Adage. Retrieved from https://adage.com/article/digitalnext/consumers-experiences-things/299994/ ), value experience over “stuff.” Authenticity provides an important place characteristic that if perceived, potentially unlocks a truly valuable consumer experience. Consequently, the research presented here develops an auxiliary theory of place authenticity (PA). The theory proposes a second‐order factor indicated by three coordinate subdimensions. Phase I of the research consists of five studies that develop PA, explore its dimensionality, and confirm the PA scale's construct validity. Phase II of the research involves a sixth study, which examines a set of hypotheses that begin to establish PA's nomological net. The results shed light on the psychology by which consumers extract value from experience and into ways marketing efforts can build effective place–value propositions.     

绿色营销的风险分析与防范

本文认为,绿色营销是传统营销的延伸和拓展,具有绿色性、持续性、外部经济性、系统性、混沌性和积累性等特征,绿色营销风险是由于绿色营销这种新的营销方式与环境的不协调而导致的,是绿色营销战略实施、市场开拓、产品销售与营销目标实现等方面的不确定性造成的。这种风险既有源于市场的市场风险,又有源于企业自身的非市场风险。文章指出,为防范绿色营销风险,应充分发挥政府的宏观调控作用;加强宣传、教育和引导工作,完善信息传递机制;要求企业增强绿色意识,重视绿色营销,把握绿色需求的变化趋势;加强绿色营销队伍建设,提高营销人员素质;注重实施联合绿色营销。     

浅谈我国绿色物流发展战略

现代物流在促进经济快速发展的同时对环境造成的危害也越来越大,发展现代物流必须优先考虑环境问题,需要从环境的角度对物流体系进行改进,形成绿色物流管理系统。实施绿色物流管理,政府应制定相应政策法规,企业应将经营战略与环境保护相结合,开发绿色物流技术,实施绿色营销战略,加强对绿色物流人才的培养。     

Transformative green marketing: Impediments and opportunities

Green marketing is not achieving its potential for improving the quality of life of consumers, while improving the natural ecosystem. The failure is the result of the inability of consumers, firms and governments to adopt systems thinking, in which macro-marketing perspectives are integrated into their respective micro-decisions, that is, the anthropocentric view of the natural world is disregarded. The paper discusses why the three groups above have had difficulties in embracing environmental issues, thus impeding real transformative green marketing from occurring. To address the difficulties three proposed actions need to be undertaken: (1) Marketers need to look for new ways of calculating and communicating value that integrates environmental value, thereby moving away from financial measures which have no real environmental meaning. (2) Change the discourse regarding the environment, highlighting the importance of action and inaction, which needs to be based on increased education about the human–environment interface. (3) Marketing needs to refocus its emphasis on want satisfaction, shifting away from the acquisition of goods, thereby enhancing how marketers create value. Making these changes will allow marketers to operationalize transformative green marketing so the human condition and the natural system that humans operate within are both improved and bring about transformative green marketing.     

The Positive Effect of Green Intellectual Capital on Competitive Advantages of Firms

No research explored intellectual capital about green innovation or environmental management. This study wanted to fill this research gap, and proposed a novel construct – green intellectual capital – to explore the positive relationship between green intellectual capital and competitive advantages of firms. The empirical results of this study showed that the three types of green intellectual capital – green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital – had positive effects on competitive advantages of firms. Moreover, this study found that green relational capital was the most common among these three types of green intellectual capital, and the three types of green intellectual capital of Medium & Small Enterprises (SMEs) were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. In sum, companies investing many resources and efforts in green intellectual capital could not only meet the trends of strict international environmental regulations and popular environmental consciousness of consumers, but also eventually obtain corporate competitive advantages. Dr. Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration in National Yunlin University of Science & Technology in Taiwan. His research focused on management of technology, innovation management, corporate environmental management, and patent analysis.     

Values,personality traits,and packaging-free shopping: A mixed-method approach

This research examines packaging-free shopping, which contributes to reducing the negative impact of plastic packaging on the environment, and its’ relationship with green consumption values, value consciousness, and psychological traits. A mixed-methods approach is adopted with quantitative followed by qualitative research. Study 1 recruits 240 respondents from social media and the lead author's university website to examine different factors that increase consumers’ likelihood of packaging-free shopping. Study 2 recruits packaging-free shoppers from Facebook Pages, explores these findings and provides further insights. Study 1 finds that consumers are driven more by green consumer values than by value consciousness, and consumers who are more conscientious are more likely to do packaging-free shopping. Study 2 supports this by finding that green consumer values drive packaging-free shopping, but this in only one part of their green efforts. The research contributes by illustrating the importance of conscientiousness specifically in the domain of packaging-free shopping and that these packaging-free shoppers are not driven in terms of value for money but by addressing their green consumer values. We recommend that packaging-free retailers and policy makers utilize promotional efforts to communicate how packaging-free shopping provides a balance with consumers’ green values for these shoppers, how it fits in with their other green efforts, and how these shopping efforts are making a difference in helping the environment.