Introduction
This thesis is based on the topic of green marketing.
According to the business dictionary (2011), green marketing can be seen as the
«promotional activities aimed at taking advantage of the
changing consumer attitudes toward a brand.» Those
changes are more and more important as they are influenced by firm's new
policies and practices that are affecting the quality of the environment, and
reflect the level of its concern for the community. Green marketing is growing
quickly and nowadays, many consumers are willing to consume green products due
to an increasing environmental consciousness. But is it the only reason?
Determinants for green purchasing are various and that lead the researcher to
establish the main research question as: what are the determinants of green
consumption?
Many researches have been conducted in order to define the
determinant of green consumption. According to various researchers it appears
that the determinant of green consumption are link to cultural orientation,
value, belief or norm, psychological, economical or socio-demographic factors
(Cleveland et al., 2005; Stern, 2000; Tina Mainieri 1997).
After making a review of the theoretical background, the
purpose of this diploma study is to examine if the socio-demographics factors;
socio-economical variables (gender, income, level of education and employment
status) stores type and living condition; can be seen as determinants for the
consumption of green products.
In order to see if those factors could be seen as determinant
for the consumption of green product, the researcher has decided to conducted
survey in order to assess consumers' knowledge and attitude against green
products. Following, conclusions and recommendations were drawn in order to see
if those factors are finally determining the consumption of green product or
not.
Chapter I
Literature review
1.1 Environmental Concern
Environmental concern has various definitions, Gill et
al., (1986) have defined it as the «protective attitude towards the
environment». However, for some researchers, like Dunlap and Jones (2002),
environmental concern is seen as «an individual's awareness of
environmental problems and individual's attempts to solve either them or
willingness to contribute to such attempts.»
Over the last 20 past years we could see an increasing feeling
of environmental concern. In fact, in 1992 took place one of the first UNCED of
the United Nation in order to take decision upon development and the
environment. This UN conference also called Earth Summit was held in order to
deliver a message that: «nothing less than a transformation of our
attitudes and behavior would bring about the necessary changes» (UN 23 may
1997). Many others meeting followed this one like the biosafty protocol in 1999
and 2000; recently the summits in Copenhagen (2009) and in Cancun (2010).
This increasing feeling of environmental concern could be
explain because of major events that occurred in the last past years. The
global warming, the ozone depletion, the water and air pollution, the loss of
species are relevant examples of what happened in recent years (Timothy
McDaniels, Lawrence J. Axelrod, Paul Slovic, 1995).
Another main reason could be the over consumption of the
natural resources due to the human activities. (Paul M Brown, Linda D Cameron,
1996) Activities, production, consumption are, as a result, also responsible of
the degradation of the environment, in a more general way the human activities
are responsible of the transformation of the environment (Richard Wilk 2002).
In fact, according to various researches, 30 to 40% of the current
environmental deterioration is due to the consumption activities (Grunert,
1993). Moreover, some others reports tend to show that this trend is growing
(Grant, 2000).
All of these have transformed and degraded the environment,
therefore nowadays,
people awareness is rising. As a consequence the world
needs a change in human
behavior and a development of cleaner and more
efficient technologies. As a
consequence in recent years many changes and developments have
occurred in both companies and consumers behavior.
Therefore, it is since the 1970s that researchers, mostly in
the United States, began to study marketing in an environmental perspective
(Kassarjian, 1971; Kinnear and Taylor, 1973; Kangun, 1974, Kinnear et al.,
1974)
Over the past twenty years, we could clearly observe a strong
tendency to the differentiation of the approaches of the companies with the
"eco-friendly" term (Brandbury and Clair, 1999). In fact, a large proportion of
company began to recycle, reduce their carbon emissions, reduce their water
consumption, or simply offering reduced packaging (Larry West 2004). In fact,
companies and consumers are now feeling concerned about those problems and try
to make the situation being better. Nowadays there are an increasing number of
companies which are doing what we called green marketing. Green marketing was
defined as «the development and marketing of product designed in a manner
that is sensitive or responsive to environmental concern» (American
marketing association 2007). As a result, the offer for green products is now
booming in our everyday life, as we can now find green products in
supermarkets. (Jeff McIntire-Strasburg 2009)
As companies are now offering green products, consumers are
now changing their consumption behaviors. In fact, behavior and habits change
because they want to contribute to the protection and improvement of the
environment.
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