Green Options » market research

Energy Efficiency Policies and Products Create Jobs

Leah Edwards — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:21:33 +0000

In this uncertain economic time, it is great to hear some good (and not just on a relative scale, but really good) news. A just-released report authored by UC Berkeley professor David Roland-Holst, called “Energy Efficiency, Innovation, and Job Creation in California,” documents the job growth and economic development that resulted from thirty years of policies enacted in California to encourage residents to adopt energy efficiency measures.

A summary by the author David Roland-Holst on the sponsor (Next 10’s) site, documents that there is wealth to be created in reducing greenhouse gases and improving the environment. You can also download an executive summary or full report via that link.

The report shows that there were job losses in a few sectors due to energy efficiency policies, but it also lists over a dozen industries where the employment gains were significant. The net result is

First Steps to Greening Your Existing Business

Leah Edwards — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:51:15 +0000

Guest Post: Several months ago, Jennifer Kaplan contacted me to ask for more details about a post I had made about consumer attitudes toward green products. She teaches a market research course at Marymount University in Arlington, VA and is a partner in the marketing consultancy, Greenhance LLC. In the following post, Jennifer reports back on a project that demonstrates where to begin when considering any change to your business, with research. — Leah

To Green Or Not To Green: That Was The Question

There are 26.4 million small businesses in the United States. This is a story about one of them. Mary Hutchens, owner of a children’s clothing boutique in Washington, DC, was thinking about going green but didn’t know where to start. Mary, like many small business owners, was interested in going green for all kinds of reasons—to control skyrocketing energy costs, to meet customer expectations, to be on the leading edge, to promote sustainability. However, Mary worried that her older customers, the “grandmas,” would revolt against fewer gift boxes and organic onesies. Like many small business owners, Mary had a lot of questions about going green and didn’t know where to find the answers.

At the same time, I was looking for a “real life” project for my undergraduate Marketing Research class. What better way to teach the students about the real world of marketing then to act as a consultant to a real life small business owner? What happened over the following four months shed light on both what consumers want AND what small business owners want when it comes to going green.

At the beginning Mary simply wanted to know specifics about gift-wrapping and shopping bag preferences. The students just wanted to know how consumers felt about going green. It was my job to make everyone see the macro and micro environmental issues at play. As such, I wanted to make sure we also determined whether purchase intent would be affected by a move toward green and which green practices would resonate most with consumers.

The Green Business Conference: Entrepreneurs Step Up

Leah Edwards — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:57:01 +0000

Welcome to a new blog about entrepreneurs who care about the environment, healthy living, fair wages or fair trade (or all of the above).

Co-op America’s San Francisco Green Business Conference, which ends later today, has attracted hundreds of entrepreneurs and others who intend to launch new businesses. I’ve seen entrepreneurs connecting (”your product would be great in my green online store”) and comparing experiences to help each other out. And the conference sessions themselves are very much geared to helping entrepreneurs.

To me, the most useful session was included findings from a study about the state of the green marketplace by Laurie Demeritt of the research company The Hartman Group. Of the many interesting tidbits she shared, one was a dramatic reminder that words mean different things to different people. Entrepreneurs who want to build new markets, need to be very careful with language.

Seemingly obvious and innocuous words can miss the mark. Some of the participants in the Hartman Report on Sustainability think that sunscreen is a sustainable product because it sustains the health of their family. Hartman received many other unusual definitions of “sustainable”, and some consumers just couldn’t relate to the word at all.

The good news is that the problem is primarily semantics. The Report found that a significant number of consumers are concerned about the health of their families and safety in their homes, and many are concerned about the ethics of the companies they buy from.

The broader (not-deep-green) market may want green products, but entrepreneurs need to describe them in ways that relate to consumers’ specific and local concerns.

If you are an entrepreneur, don’t assume your friends and family are a representative sample of the broader market. Get out there and test your messages before investing in names, packaging, marketing materials, etc.