Green Options » consumers

Five Consumer Benefits You Need To Sell Green

Jennifer Kaplan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:01:04 +0000

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:

Market Opportunities: Consumers May Spend Over $100 Billion on Green Tech in 2008

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:56:18 +0000

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:

Good News — Maybe — for Green-Collar Workers

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:50:06 +0000

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 workers employed by a renewable-energy or energy-efficiency industry by 2030, according to a new report from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). That’s promising for both U.S. employees and for anyone concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels. But it will happen only, as the ASES report says, under “an aggressive deployment forecast scenario.”

That means we, as citizens and consumers, are going to have to apply strong and steady pressure on legislators — local, state and national — to do the right thing. And that, we all know, isn’t easy.

Still, if — as the saying goes — money walks, green-collar types might see Beltway support grow as green industries expand their economic muscle, which means more dollars for lobbying and campaign financing. And, in that regard, the future looks bright.

In the U.S., renewable-energy and energy-efficiency industries are already generating 8.5 million jobs and nearly $970 billion in annual revenues, according to the ASES report. “To put this in perspective,” the report states, “(t)otal sales for Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil and General Motors in 2006 were $905 billion.”

While companies on the energy-efficiency side — things like better windows, efficient appliances and insulation — are making more of the money right now, the renewables side is growing more rapidly.

The ASES predicts the hottest, fastest-growing industries will involve solar power, wind energy, ethanol and fuel-cell technologies. With the right level of public support, it says, we could see up to 40 million people employed — as everything from accountants and biochemists to engineers, mechanics and truck drivers — in the renewable-energy and energy-efficiency sectors by 2030, with annual green-industry revenues of $4.5 trillion.

Getting there, though, will require much more than a business-as-usual approach, the ASES report warns.

“This scenario requires appropriate, aggressive, sustained public policies at the federal and state level during next two decades,” it states. Getting decision-makers to come on board might take oil shortages, fossil-fuel price increases, growing security concerns or a greater awareness of the impact of climate change. The fear of suffering economically at a global level might also be a motivator.

“If we fail to invest in (renewable energy and energy efficiency), the United States runs the risk of losing ground to international … programs and industries,” the report concludes. “For the United States to be competitive in a carbon-constrained world, the (renewable energy and energy efficiency) industry will be a critical economic driver.”

Red, Green & Blue: Is Shopping Anti-Environment?

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:11:23 +0000

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 (local produce, fair-trade and sustainable goods) and not to buy what I don’t need … but buy nothing (outside of the obvious food, medicine, essential clothing)? Is this a legitimate strategy for conserving and saving the Earth? What do you think?