Green Options

Yesterday, I blogged about the reasons marketers are choosing “green” as a marketing strategy. But for companies that pursue this strategy, it becomes clear pretty quickly that just marketing a green product isn’t enough. The company has to be sincere in its own commitment to environmental sustainability and show genuine sensitivity to the needs and concerns of its customer base. This has to be more than lip service. It’s got to be the real deal. 

So who are these green consumers (or LOHAS or lifestyles of health and sustainability consumers) and what are some of their demographics and psychographics that will help marketers to relate to them effectively? Collette Chandler of Keyboard Culture (Green Marketing), describes them this way:

• Leading-edge thinkers
• Higher-than-average education
• Average incomes (this may be a surprise to many who thought their incomes would be higher, but it’s no surprise to people with PhDs!)
• Among the least price sensitive consumers
• Expect good value (they expect green products to perform equal to or even better than equivalent non-green products)
• Extremely brand loyal
• Tend to write blogs
• Influence others, particularly their family and friends
• Early adopters
• Influenced by brand image

What drives LOHAS consumers to make the purchases they do? 

What’s all the fuss about green marketing? It’s more than just another hook to get people to buy products. It’s about the types of people who purchase green products. They have higher than average incomes, they are willing to pay up to 20% more for products and services (according to Collette Chandler, an author and consultant specializing in green marketing), and they are extremely brand loyal. It’s a marketer’s dream.

It’s no wonder that companies are targeting this marketplace.

We know that we are supposed to do what is good for the environment. We know that the time we live in requires a great change in what we consider to be normal lives. We have inherited living habits and basic expectations about what we should have in our lives from the grand developments of the last one or two hundred years.

These developments made our lives much easier and more comfortable (in some respects) but they also pulled from the Earth and pulled more than we could initially see. We now see that we have pulled more, and polluted more, than we should have and that our great systems need to innovate further if we are going to continue on in anything similar to the world we live in now.

In the meantime, we know that we have to change. Our systems have to change, and in order for that to happen we need to change.

So far, there is not much new in what you are reading. However, there are many options in how we view this demand to change.

1) We can take the view, that many of us here today are taking, that we have to change in order to ’save the world’ (the world as we know it).

2) We can take the view that we need to change because it is our personal responsibility to not live beyond our means and since we are currently living far beyond our means we need to change.

3) We can take the view that this life of ours is more than a physical experience, more than a brief human lifetime, and this challenge is a challenge we are facing for the purpose of spiritual development. It is this option I am going to elaborate on.