Green Marketing and Stakeholder Perceptions

Green Marketing

Concern over the environment has evolved through several distinct phases. From the 1960s ecology movement focusing on pollution and energy conservation, to the recent use of environmental issues as a source of competitive advantage in business and politics, individual and societal concerns over environmental issues have become increasingly apparent to the casual observer as the twenty-first century draws near. This evolution has resulted in an expanded list of issues that fall within the domain of environmental responsibility (Straughan & Roberts, 1999, p.558).

Green marketing concept was first discussed at the American Marketing Association (AMA)’s conference on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975 which attempted to bring together academics, practitioners, and public policy makers to examine marketing’s impact on the natural environment (Polonsky, 1994, p.1). The environmental movement changed in two significant ways in the mid-1980s. First, it adopted a professional rather than an ideological philosophy. Second, as adversaries sought new ground on which to become allies, the relationships between the environmentalists and the law-makers changed from confrontational to accommodative (Menon & Menon, 1997, p. 54). Yet it was not until 1990 that green marketing “arrived in earnest” (Peattie, 1992, p.46).