بازاریابی سبز تحول آفرین: موانع و فرصت ها

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.

Marketing academics' and practitioners' interest in how environmental issues impact marketing activities continue to grow (Chamorro et al., 2009), but is certainly not new (Fisk, 1974 and Henion and Kinnear, 1976). A range of marketing contexts examines the interface between the natural environment and; consumer behavior (i.e., Diamantopoulos et al., 2003), marketing strategy (i.e., Menon and Menon, 1997), public policy initiatives (i.e., Press and Arnould, 2009) and macromarketing (i.e., Kilbourne and Carlson, 2008). Fisk (1974) suggests marketing is at least partly to blame for most of the world's environmental ills that often arise from consumption and over-consumption. Other authors suggest that marketing can assist in addressing environmental and other social problems (Sheth and Sisodia, 2006). Unfortunately, much of the existing research fails to embed environmental issues as a core tenet of marketing thinking. Thus, marketing strategists often incorporate environmental considerations as an extra feature to be leveraged for competitive advantage (Ginsberg and Bloom, 2004), rather than using the environment to shape strategy-improving market conditions and social welfare. Scholars define green marketing using a range of terms (e.g., green marketing, ecological marketing, environmental marketing, and even responsible marketing). These definitions have a common focus on the exchange process (i.e., choices and decisions), with a proviso that exchange considers and minimizes environmental harm (where all parities are assumed to be aware of all potential environmental harm). Whether or not these definitions (and associated practices) seek to improve the quality of life of the world's citizens, or improve the natural environment, remains unclear. An effective definition of green marketing, therefore, must integrate transformative change that creates value for individuals and society, as well as for the natural environment (i.e., environmental restoration and improvement). Thus, transformative green marketing is very different from a marketing perspective that focuses on not producing societal harm, as, at present, most marketers focus on meeting human needs rather than enhancing mankind's quality of life and improving the natural environment. Marketers and society rely on nature and natural resources; nature does not rely on humanity, even though society can negatively impact on it. Therefore, mankind (and, thus, marketing) and the natural environment are interdependent. While some might debate the extent of mankind's contribution to environmental problems, if the doomsayers are correct, failure to act in the medium term will result in the inability of the ecosystem to support present day consumption, potentially eliminating marketing as presently practiced (and possibly mankind). Therefore, it is surprising that the practice of marketing (and business strategy more generally) does not explicitly integrate and address environmental issues and how they impact society (Smart, 2010). In the not-so-distant past, businesses were quick to respond to less significant marketing-related problems. For example, firms, consumers and governments reportedly spent hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars dealing with the millennium bug, or Y2K problem, as programmers feared that at 12.01 AM on January 1 2000, computers would incorrectly believe the year was 1900 which would cause systems to crash. The process of greening marketing seems to be viewed with significantly less urgency on the part of most consumers, organizations and governments, even though the potential costs of inaction are much more serious and pervasive (Smart, 2010 and Varey, 2010). Whether or not the marketing discipline (both academics and practitioners) truly understands and embraces the profound significance of environmental issues remains unclear. A number of marketing academics call for a change in thinking about marketing, in which transformative green marketing would be included. For example, early in the discipline's history Kotler and Levy (1969) suggested that there needs to be a broadening of the marketing concept. More recently, others are questioning whether marketing needs to be reformed (Sheth and Sisodia, 2006). In the consumer behavior field, there is growing chorus of transformative consumer researchers (TCR) calling for marketing to make a positive social impact (Mick et al., forthcoming). The integration of environmental issues into marketing would extend the TCR view. For example, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing has a forthcoming special issue focusing on TCR, and the Journal of Macromarketing recently published a special issue on sustainability, examining how marketing can assist in addressing the environmental ills faced today ( Kilbourne, 2010). Transformative green marketing extends this perspective incorporating environmental issues into core marketing activity, in the same way mankind is part of the natural system and not separated from the natural environment ( Fisk, 1974 and Smart, 2010).

The environmental problems facing mankind create an imperative for transformational green marketing and require the inclusion of macro-issues into consumer, firm and governments' micro-behavior. The environmental system is just that, an inter-connected system within which humans are only one small part. Unfortunately, understanding consumers' and marketers' roles in that system and responding by changing consumption patterns is not something that consumers, firms or even governments are presently doing. Being transformative requires a change in thinking, which is at the heart of the problem. Humans and societies (especially those in the West) have difficulty in taking a long-term, inclusive systems perspective that effectively values the natural environment. Current thinking translates into individual behavior, organizational strategy and government policy shaped primarily by a paradigm flawed with myopic anthropocentric individualist thinking. To have any chance of success, transformational green marketing needs to use the existing structures and thinking to ensure environmental issues become a core component of how the markets and marketing operate. One of the most pressing issues is to develop a costing mechanism that ensures the integration of environmental costs of production and consumption into decision-making and stimulates innovation to address the new costs. A carbon tax placed on all goods consumed by business and consumers is one step, but does not integrate all environmental issues and only focuses on one environmental issue that is easily measured, carbon. Unfortunately, a carbon tax will not work on its own without revisiting some of the basic assumptions of the free market. For example, free market thinking assumes instantaneous, free and costless information (which, in reality, rarely occurs), not to mention free global movement of resources. Environmental taxes need to be supported by a change in the way society thinks about the environment and acknowledgement that consumers are a part of the system, rather than the environment being a system for humans to use. Even if consumers had access to all the available scientific information, would they be able to understand the issues sufficiently to act appropriately? Does the language used at present adequately reflect the importance of these issues in relation to decision-making, both in terms of local and global impacts? Given the inter-connected nature of the ecosystems, remedial action cannot be limited to one country, as environmental issues traverse man-made, artificial national boundaries (for example, pollution in the US has resulted in acid rain in Canada). Transformational green marketing can work within the present exchange system of consumers, business and institutions, as well as work to change the system to better integrate environmental issues. Marketers need to broaden their activities, creating alternative ways of presenting value and costs, changing the way businesses talk about human interactions and the environment, and reframing consumption from a focus on acquiring goods to ways to sustainably achieve want satisfaction. Marketers (business, government, and consumers) can assist in this process by identifying opportunities to redefine value within marketing and exchange. The world's biosphere is sustainable; the marketing of human consumption in its present form may not be.