History of Green Marketing

According to the American Marketing Association 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. Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task where several meanings intersect and contradict each other, an example of this will be the existence of varying social, environmental and retail definitions attached to this term.
History of Green Marketing:
The term Green Marketing came into prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The American Marketing Association (AMA) held the first workshop on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975. The proceeding of this workshop resulted in one of the first books on green marketing entitled. Ecological Marketing
Three keys to successful Green Marketing:
Show potential customers that you follow green business practices and you could reap more green on your bottom line. Green Marketing isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s a marketing strategy that can help you get more customers and make more money. But only if you do it right.
For green marketing to be effective, you have to do three things; be genuine, educate your customers, and give them the opportunity to participate.

Being Genuine means that a) that you are actually doing what you claim to be doing in your green marketing campaign and b) that the rest of your business policies are consistent with whatever you are doing that’s environmentally friendly.

Educating your Customers isn’t just a matter of letting people know you’re doing whatever you’re doing to protect the environment, but also a matter of letting them know why it
Matters Otherwise, for a significant portion of your target market, it’s a case of “So what?” And your green marketing campaign goes nowhere.

Giving your customer an opportunity to participate:

Giving your customer an opportunity to participate means personalizing the benefits of your environmentally friendly actions, normally through letting the customer take part in positive environmental action.
Why Green Marketing?
As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers to utilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organizations objective. So green Marketing is inevitable.
There is growing interest among the customers all over the world regarding Protection of environment. World Wide Evidence indicates people are concerned about the Environment and are changing their Behavior.
Benefits of Green Marketing:
Companies that develop new and improved products and services with environment inputs in mind give themselves access to new markets, increase their profit Sustainability, and enjoy a Competitive advantage over the Companies which are not concerned for the Environment.
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
Government pressure
Competitive pressure
Cost or profit issues

Green Marketing Mix:
Every company has its own favorite marketing mix. Some have 4 P’s and some have 7 P’s marketing mix. The 4 P’s of green marketing are that of a conventional marketing but the challenge before is to use 4 P’s in an innovative manner
Product
The ecological objectives in planning products are to reduce resource consumption and pollution and to increase conservation of scarce resources
Price
Price is a critical and important factor of green marketing mix. Most consumers will only be prepared to pay additional value if there is a perception of extra product value this value may be improved performance, function, design, visual appeal or taste Green marketing should take all these facts into consideration while charging a premium price
Promotion
There are three of green advertising:-

Ads that address a relationship between a product/service and the biophysical environment
Those that promote a green life style by highlighting a product or service.
Ads that present a corporate image of environmental responsibility.

Place
The choice of where and when to make a product available will have.
Strategies for Green Marketing:
The marketing strategies for green marketing include:

Marketing Audit ( Including internal and external situation analysis)
Develop a marketing plan outlining strategies with regard to 4 P’s.
Implement Marketing strategies.
Plan result evaluation

Challenges ahead Green Marketing:
Green products require renewable and recyclable material, which is costly
Requires a technology, which requires huge investment in R & D
Water treatment technology, which is too costly
Majority of the people are not aware of green products and their uses
Majority of the consumers are not willing to pay a premium for green products.
Conclusion:
Green marketing should not neglect the economic aspect of marketing. Marketers need to understand the implications of green marketing. If you think customers are not concerned about environmental issues or will not pay a premium for products that are more eco-responsible, think again. You must find an opportunity enhance you products’ performance and strengthen your customer’s loyalty and command a higher price. Green marketing is still in its infancy and a lot of research is to be done on green marketing to fully explore its potential.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research design which has been formed for this research article is descriptive research design. The nature of data which is collected and used for this research article is secondary. The relevant and required data are collected from secondary sources such as text books, national as well as international articles…