Abstract
Green marketing strategies have the immense power of motivating both consumers and producers to get involved in saving the planet and, at the same time, to benefit from the potential of eco-friendly products while satisfying their needs. On one hand, this chapter reviews the theory on green marketing strategies, and on the other hand, it focuses on the manner in which organizations can obtain financial and non-financial performance with the aid of green marketing strategies mix. This study reports that intellectual capital factor plays a key role in discovering the optimum green marketing strategies mix, also placing natural capital among the notable capital factors that empower organizations' activities and strengthen their visibility on the marketplace. The quantitative and qualitative indicators that have been analyzed highlight the main economic, social, and environmental effects of business practices in Romania. The findings provide some interesting clues regarding the impact of intellectual capital and green marketing strategies on organizational performance.
TopIntroduction
Nowadays, people seem to become more and more concerned to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations and that is the reason why sustainable development within all nations’ system represents a leading global concern. In addition, sustainability includes the idea of global society - based on respect for nature, standing for universal human rights, having in mind economic justice and striving for culture of peace, which means universally re - examining the countries policies on environmental protection, social responsibility and economic practice.
Green marketing - possibly the newest and most challenging form of marketing, is one of the most discussed and analyzed forms of marketing these days. Organizations, customers, governmental and state leaders are globally concerned about green marketing importance and potential, being extremely keen on discovering all the solutions and alternatives that green marketing might offer in terms of producing, promoting and recycling products that respect and preserve the environment.
However, as any other new discovery that comes to light at one moment or another, green marketing meets a few problems, such as: lack of confidence from organizations which are worried that their capacity of gaining profit and reaching the performance targets might be affected; lack of trust from consumers which are seeing some of the alternatives offered by green marketing as manipulative and, in some cases, even potentially harmful for their health; too much effort to replace conventional technologies and products with new ones.
This paper focuses mainly on the authors’ perspective concerning the impact of green marketing strategies on both the financial and non - financial performance of organizations, with a particular emphasis on the place of intellectual capital factor among the key solutions for organizations worldwide. The authors show a great interest in their study in the “green movement” and “green practices” alongside other emerging forms of development such as Global Green Economy Index, green human resources and environmental management, green workforce, green intellectual capital, green initiatives, green marketing strategies, green performance indicators, green economy and business sustainability, green communities and smart cities, green banking, finance and accounting, having in mind at all times the imperative necessity to enhance peoples’ awareness towards environmental protection, pro - environmental activities and green consciousness (The Global Green Economy Index™ (GGEI), 2018). In the same time, this scientific work addresses Romania’s situation concerning business, environmental and human resources sustainability, making however valuable comparisons with the present international trends and evolutions in terms of environmental, political and social responsibility.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Green Marketing: It is presumably one of the newest, most challenging and highly spoken off forms of marketing these days, which mainly refers to the activity in which the production, promotion, advertisement and recycle of environmentally - friendly products takes place, having however a much larger acceptance among specialists according to the American Marketing Association due to three possible ways to be defined, respectively: in terms of sales, social marketing implications and the environment.
Green (National) Accounting: It is a concept that raises far too much confusion, unreasonably far too many disagreements and way too many controversies, emphasizing a new system of sustainable accounting that enables the calculation of income for a country by taking into consideration the economic damage in the natural resource base of an economy, serving numerous purposes, such as the welfare equivalent income, sustainable income, net social profit and being linked to Green Net National Product (“Green NNP”) as well as to “greener” national accounting aggregates - namely, “genuine savings” and “Eco-Domestic Product.”
Sustainable Development Progress Goals and Model: It addresses a new set of challenges and targets for countries worldwide that turns out to be focused on more inclusive concerns and visions, such as end poverty in all its forms everywhere in the world; end hunger with the aid of improved nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food security; promote wellbeing and ensure a sane life for all individuals; ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all individuals; ensure access to affordable and sustainable forms of energy for all; promote sustainable economic growth and sustainable industrialization by fostering innovation; and make communities inclusive, safe, and sustainable.
Green Human Resources Management: It is, in essence, one of the healthiest—if not the healthiest—organizational strategy for the future, which refers to the organizations’ sustainable use of human resources management values, philosophies, policies and practices aimed to promote and ensure that all the existing business resources are eco-friendly; there are two main directions, on the one hand, a direction targeting environmentally friendly human resources practices, and, on the other hand, a direction centered on the preservation of knowledge capital.
Global Green Economy Index: It was launched in 2010 and was then the first green economy index, measuring by both qualitative and quantitative methods the green economy performance of a significant number of countries and the way in which specialists assess performance (for example, in 2018 it focused on 130 countries all around the globe), targeting the following four dimensions: leadership and climate change, efficiency sectors, markets and investment, and the environment.
Green Marketing Strategy: It is an essential requirement when activating in an environmentally friendly organization and takes into consideration two major perspectives: the first one aims to determine the importance of the green consumer segment for the organization, and the second one endeavors to achieve weather the organization will acquire a different position on the marketplace once associated with sustainable environment and lifestyle, green products, energy efficient, renewable, and sustainable resources.
Sustainable Organizational Performance: It represents a more integrated way into the consciousness of corporate organizational responsibility, learning and development of making profit and being efficient on the marketplace, which is designed to support long-term sustainable organizational goals and outcomes by balancing people, the state of wellbeing, prosperity, and the planet.
Corporate Social Responsibility: It is also known also as corporate citizenship, is a concept that attracted by far a lot of attention in the last years due to its appealing nature as well as its intriguing implications, and represents a self-regulating business model that enables companies to be socially accountable to their customers, public, communities, stakeholders, governments, and state by showing that they are conscious at all times about the manner in which their activities affect the economy, the society, and the environment.
Green Performance Management: It links the environmental concerns of the organizations (the issues related to the “green wave”, the integrated management performance) to the general organizational process by which employees are enhancing their professional skills aiming to achieve the organizational values, goals and objectives in an optimum manner.
Intellectual Capital: It is one of the most delicate, engaging, cunning and volatile concept available in today’s modern society, referring in the same time or separately (depending on the circumstances) to the influence of non-material factors on the economy or to the intangible assets and factors of the organizational work, addressing a new vision for competing with the future for the organizations – far from the traditional one, stressing the importance of individuals, enterprises, institutions, communities, countries hidden potential and values on the society, the economy and the environment capable to cultivate creativity and wellbeing.