By Andrew Williams •
October 19, 2009
A major new survey has revealed that nearly 50% of all US consumers would consider buying a ‘green’ cell phone, but only if key factors such as the price, features, and performance were equivalent to other phones.
According to the poll of 1,000 American adults carried out by ABI Research, just 7% would be willing to pay a premium to go green, a figure that may cause cell phone companies to think deeply before investing heavily in environmentally friendlier models.
Speaking about the findings, industry analyst Michael Morgan said, “These survey results mean that almost half of those surveyed were at least committed in principle to use of a green handset. However the public is largely uninformed about their availability: only 4% said they were ‘very familiar’ with green handsets.”
Companies marketing green products and, in particular, promoting their green energy initiatives are using words like “energy conservation” and “green energy,” but what effect has this had on consumers? Do they care? Do they even understand what these terms mean?
EcoAlign, a strategic marketing agency focused on energy and the environment, decided to find out. In September, it conducted 1,000 interviews, comparing against a similar survey conducted in September 2007. The sample was balanced to match the U.S. population by age, gender, region and ethnicity.
The results? Green Align found that consumers generally have positive associations with the terms “energy efficiency,” “energy conservation” and “clean energy,” but their understanding of what these terms mean has remained the same or decreased since 2007.
They also have low or negative understanding about technical terms such as “demand response” (resulting in the recommendation that such terminology not be used in external marketing communications) and showed a lot of confusion about green pricing terminology such as “peak pricing,” “green pricing,” and “fuel supply pricing.”
Moreover, consumers remain confused about the definitions of basic terms. They cannot articulate the difference between energy conservation, energy efficiency and smart energy. Less than one third chose the correct definition for those terms from among a selection of definitions (multiple choices).
By Keith Rockmael •
May 22, 2009
San Francisco’s zany Bay to Breakers race brings out not only world class runners but crazy costumes as well. Some companies took advantage of the crazy and healthy atmosphere to promote various items (energy drinks, anti pain patches) but we had to question the Foster Farms “Say No to Plumping” race team.
Sure, everyone seemed to enjoy having their photo taken with the plump Foster Farms chickens but the brightly colored 16-person Foster Farms race team seemed bent on raising awareness of a little-known food fact: “plumped” or saltwater-injected chicken that costs consumers their health and money.
By Sonya •
April 15, 2009
A new report claims that the increasing number of ‘all-natural’ and ‘organic’ products on the market may be guilty of “the seven sins of greenwashing”.
TerraChoice Environmental Marketing released its report The Seven Sins of Greenwashing today. The report defines greenwashing as “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.”
By Sonya •
February 27, 2009
A new U.S. organics education and marketing campaign is aimed at families with young children. The Organic Agriculture and Products Education Institute (Organic Institute) has launched ‘Organic. It’s worth it’, its first national consumer campaign.
“The mission of this campaign is to answer consumer questions about organic with the clear message that organic is worth it in every way from health care and economics to farming and the environment. It will increase consumer trust, knowledge and purchase of organic products,” says Christine Bushway, president of the Organic Institute and executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the campaign sponsor.
By Jennifer Kaplan •
August 13, 2008
All the talk about benefits vs. features in last week’s post, Green Consumers Pull Back- Now What? Recession Strategies For Eco Businesses, reminded me of an NAHB article on green homes in which William H. Kreager, an architect at Mithun Architects+Designers+Planners who specializes in sustainable projects, suggests that there is a “trifecta of benefits” builders can use to market homes to buyers:
- A healthy home (1: health and safety)
- Savings due to energy efficiency (2: efficiency and the related cost savings)
- Lower maintenance costs (3:performance and related cost savings)
Kreager is talking about a principle that all green marketers could stand to know: that customer satisfaction needs to be derived by meeting fundamental – not specifically green — consumer values. Green Marketing Myopia, which outlines the above three benefits plus two more, (4) convenience and (5) status (really making it a quintuplet of benefits), sums it up well:
That’s one of the major findings of the recently-released 2007 National Technology Readiness Survey (NTRS), sponsored by the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, and research firm Rockbridge Associates, Inc. This is good news for ecopreneurs, especially since the survey also notes that many consumers want to buy “green tech” products, but can’t find what they want:
…while 83 percent of adults said they wanted to protect the environment, and 59 percent said they like trying new technologies to help the environment, about 42 percent said such technologies were hard to find.
An ideal situation for ecopreneurs? Perhaps… both for new companies, and for those that want to market green products better. Both P.K. Kannan, director of the Smith School’s Center for Excellence in Service, and Charles Colby, president of Rockbridge, offer some tips for effectively tapping this market:
There’s good news for the future of green-collar employment, but it comes with a caveat: maximizing job growth in green industries will require the right public policy support. That means law-makers need to approve measures such as a renewable portfolio standard, incentives for renewable energy, public education programs and adequate funding for research and development.
If such measures are put in place, the U.S. could see as many as one out of every four [...]
Even as many retailers are adopting the marketing slogan, "Buy Green," a backlash movement is emerging calling on people to "buy nothing" or, at least, "buy as little as possible and, preferably, buy nothing new."
Now, I can pretty well predict how free-marketers would respond to this ("Aaaagh! There goes the economy!"). But how effective is the buy-nothing strategy environmentally? I’ve seen arguments both pro and con.
I try to buy responsibly
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