‘Green
Marketing with Special Reference to Malls, GLOBUS, Vol. 3, No.1 Jul-Dec 2011,
ISSN: 0975-721X.
Green Marketing with Special Reference to Malls
Rajeev Gupta
Assistant Professor
IIMT
College of Management
Gr.
Noida
Dr. Tarun Singhal
Professor
INMANTEC
Ghaziabad
Abstract
The world is facing the problem of waste
disposition. This waste is not only from the usage of electronic items but also
by various other elements like atomic reactors, lead, silicon, plastic etc.
The waste in large is also affecting the
eco-system of earth. The “contribution” in this regard is from every part of
the world, be it developed country or under developed country. The ratio
differs from country to country. The problem in bigger sense is termed as
“global warming”.
Now a day when the parameter of growth
also incorporates the number of malls in a particular geographical area, the
relevance of “green” has more significance. The malls do not carry or have very
less area covered with green. The “coolness” is developed through air
conditioners which create more heat and add more negativity to environment.
Environmental issues are now a day
seeing more light and attention due to the active participants of various NGOs
and other agencies. Therefore, malls owner need to bring new insight in this
issue while marketise themselves. Their contribution in hygiene and
sophistication, if backed by green revolution, may get more boost and
incorporate more business for them.
Statement
of Problem
“The needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need”,
Introduction
Green is the word of the world. The
growing concern with global warming and ecosystem preservation is forcing
everyone into taking some serious steps towards a better world.
To protect and preserve the environment,
many industries have started taking the matter seriously. Topping the list are
retailers and FMCG companies that have rapidly learnt that being green and
appearing green, makes great business combination.
The rate of environmental degradation
has intensified. The nineteenth century
brought the first large scale pollution as companies geared themselves to
produce goods as fast as possible, with virtual disregard for human or
environmental well-being. Nations battled for industrial supremacy using raw
materials and creating pollution at a staggering rate. As countries became
economically stronger, competition also grew. More efficient production methods
were employed, and few companies, if any, gave a thought to the impact they
were having on their surroundings. With the increase in water pollution from
the chemical works, and air pollution from the iron and steel industry, towns
and cities began to pay the price for high industrial productivity.
Green marketing involves developing and
promoting products and services that satisfy customer's want and need for
Quality, Performance, Affordable Pricing and Convenience without having a
detrimental input on the environment.
Objective
- To
know about Green Marketing
- What
IT companies are doing with reference to Green marketing
- To
know the upcoming mall culture in
What’s
prompting them to go green?
One of the main reasons that is
prompting retailers and FMCG companies to go green is the customer’s
willingness to shell out extra money for green brands. The consumers have
become conscious about the environment and thus prefer buying eco-friendly
products. And this is reason enough to consider green branding.
“Nature is the lifeline of the business
at Dabur. We have not merely incorporated the concept of sustainability into
the core of our business but have, in fact, expanded it to encompass our
aspirations and responsibilities to the society and to the environment. It is
this concept that inspires us to optimise our business performance to tackle
the new and growing challenges of environment and technology,” says the
spokesperson for Dabur.
FMCG players can reduce carbon emission
at two levels, at the manufacturing and at the supply chain level. Some
companies are developing their own eco-standards and product labelling.
Green marketing refers to the
development and distribution of ecologically-safe products. It refers to
products and packages that have one or more of the following characteristics:
• Less
toxic
• More
durable
• Contain
reusable materials
• Made
of recyclable material.
Support
given by IT companies
Wipro, being one of the leading green IT
brands, has taken various initiatives to help retailers reduce their carbon
footprints and carbon levels. Wipro’s award winning platforms, the Global
Command Center (GCC) and Global Service Management Center (GSMC) have been used
for many years to help its customers manage their IT infrastructure,
substantially reducing the costs of service delivery. “Over the past few years,
we have invested a significant amount in research and development. This enables
us to bring in the same structured services that are standardised in the IT
infra world to business critical infrastructure for customers (like Kiosks for
retail) and building infrastructure (like heating/cooling, lighting, and
electrical systems) a truly end-to-end infrastructure solution. The key benefit
to the customers is reduction of operating expenditure due to reduced field
support costs, and energy costs,” says Kiran Desai, VP, Managed IT, Wipro
Infotech.
Wipro also offers a power saving
solution, which shuts down the desktops in retail shops, godown, back offices
and places where desktops are not used by end user beyond their office hours.
Wipro also suggests the retail layout to retailers to reduce load, which might
also involve civil work.
Dabur has initiated several new green
projects under which alternate sources of energy are proposed to be utilised as
a substitute for boiler fuel. One such project is in which briquettes will be
made out of herbal waste. A project to use wet herbal waste as fuel directly in
the boiler is being initiated at Pantnagar, Uttranachal in collaboration with a
Belgian company. A new husk based gasifier is being installed at the
Key
elements of “Green Marketing”
- A balanced
approach to the social, technological, economic and physical aspects of
businesses and societies.
- An emphasis
on long term sustainable qualitative development rather than short-term
unsustainable quantitative growth.
- A holistic
approach aimed at reversing the reduction list and fragmented approach of
previous business theory and practice.
- A
consideration of consumers as real human beings rather than as hypothetical
‘rational economic entities.
- An emphasis
on meeting the genuine needs of consumers, rather than on stimulating
superficial desires.
- Recognition
that consumers and society have multiple and sometimes conflicting wants
and needs.
- A view of
the company and all its activities as part of the ‘product’ that is
consumed.
- A recognition
that the large scale long distance nature of the current economy is not
sustainable, and that in the future small and local will be beautiful.
- Embracing
the concept of eco-performance which incorporates the non-market outputs
of the company, with performance of the product during and after use and
the environmental impact of companies which contribute to the creation and
marketing of the product elsewhere in the supply chain.
- The pursuit
of added socio-environmental value as well as added techno-economic value.
Sustainability
and Green Marketing
Sustainability and green marketing
initiatives will need to be addressed, as influences (such as government
mandates, consumer awareness, competitor actions, etc.) converge and heighten.
Green marketing and other sustainability practices are in the initial stages of
being incorporated into modern trade.
Kumar Rajagopalan, Chief Executive
Officer, RAI said, “While every top business house in India has recognized
retail as the big sector to invest in and be a big player in this sector,
retail CEOs are working with great enthusiasm to meet the exacting detail
requirements of this challenging business. Opportunities are apparent; however
the pitfalls are just as possible.”
Rajagopalan further added, “In a
business wherein the competitive landscape changes every day and customer
preferences are re-defined often, retailers have to keep perfecting their
capabilities around place, people, price, product, communication, supply chain,
vendors and processes. Every CEO knows that there are lots of areas for
strategic investments and many are making active trade-offs to achieve
supremacy on some of the aspects of retail business. Our study shows the
various aspects that retailers are trying to master and win in the market
place.”
To transform into a ‘green’ sustainable
culture, there is a need to balance consideration of the economic and technical
impacts and aspects of businesses with understanding of their social and
physical implications.
Retail
scenario & upcoming mall culture in
Traditionally retailing in
It is one of
“Green”
In MALLS
The
mall management companies need to know about what is the relevance of Green
Marketing in order to protect the environment and to improve the quality of
life and are concerned with issues that include conservation of natural
resources, reducing environmental pollution and control of land use. This
ultimately will lead to positively affect the society. Many companies are
finding that consumers are willing to pay more for a green product. The last
three decades have seen a progressive increase in worldwide environmental
consciousness. This has been driven by a number of factors from increased media
coverage to rising evidence of environmental problems such as the depletion of
the ozone layer, acidification of rivers and forest degradation, global
warming, the rise of pressure group activity, tougher legislation and major
industrial disasters. Concern has moved from the local scale to a national and
increasingly global scale.
It is now widely accepted that
societies, economies, and the businesses within them need to find a more
sustainable path to for future development. In the business world the
vocabulary of management was suddenly expanded by the discussion of ‘green
consumers’, ‘green markets’ and ‘green products’ and the practice of
‘environmental’ or ‘green marketing’. For majority of the malls improving
environmental performance has, until recently, been a question of legislative
compliance and occasional reactions to external events and pressures. Companies
were increasingly pursuing competitive advantage and product differentiation by
increasing investment in environmental marketing, green design and improving
overall corporate eco-performance. In addition to these externally motivated
changes, the realization is dawning within industry that sustainability will not
be reached simply by demand-pull from the market and compliance-push from the
regulators. The changes that are needed to safeguard the future of the
environment and the economy must partly be driven from the business community,
which means they must proactively integrate eco-performance into the
strategies, systems and cultures of the organization.
Many malls are
concentrating on Waste Hierarchy
The waste hierarchy refers to the 3Rs of reduce, reuse and recycle, which classify
waste management strategies according to their desirability. The 3Rs are meant to
be a hierarchy, in order of importance. The aim of the waste
hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to
generate the minimum amount of waste.
- Reduce
- Reuse and
- Recycle
REDUCE:
The mall management companies are looking desperately to reduce the operating
cost of the malls. In this area they are facing fierce competition by nearby
malls and unorganized sector. For this they have chalked out the strategy of
reducing the waste of any kind i.e. save water, less use of plastic contained
material etc. They have also tried to put “many eggs in the same basket” so
that the overall cost of running it can be reduced. More over, the silent
generators are also used to reduce the noise level at its lowest. These are the
few measures taken by the malls.
They
are promoting buy less and use less. Incorporates common sense ideas like
turning off the lights, rain barrels etc. but also plays a part in
Composting/Grasscycling (transportation energy is reduced), low-flow toilets,
and programmable thermostats
REUSE:
Now a days nokia and many other companies are promoting the concept of “REUSE”.
The reason behind is not only the business but also an exercise to promote
themselves as “society conscious” companies. The plastic bottles are containing
the specific figures on it pointing out the times it can be reused. In this way
the resources are not only get saved but the advertisement of that particular
brand is also done at low cost.
Reuse
in every day life is, in fact, prominent everywhere now a days. For eg. cars are
far more popular second-hand than new. However, this is a trend which largely
relates to costly items. For example, of the people who wouldn’t consider
looking for second-hand shoes, a small proportion would think twice about
living in a previously owned house – which is likely to have had a whole range of
people sleeping, eating and toileting in it.
RECYCLE:
Means discards are separated into materials that may be
incorporated into new products. This is different from Reuse in that energy is
used to change the physical properties of the material. Initiatives include
Composting, Beverage Container Deposits and buying products with a high content
of post-consumer material.
It seems very odd but various metro
cities are promoting the concept of “recycle” in their areas including malls. Recycling is the processes of
collecting, processing, remanufacturing, and reusing materials instead of
discarding them. This helps conserve raw materials and energy that
manufacturers would otherwise use in producing new products. Recycling also
reduces the amount of material going into landfills. Recycling helps lessen the
pollution that may result from waste disposal. Reducing our consumption of
materials and reducing the waste of materials also adds to the conservation of
our resources.
Conclusion
Green marketing takes account of the
wider relationship of the organization and its products & service to the
surroundings. It is about a more aware, open, targeted and sensitive approach
that integrates the strategic link between the company, the environment, and
marketing, rather than being primarily concerned with tactical communications
opportunities. The prime emphasis is on, developing relationships and
satisfying separate Stakeholders needs in an environmentally and socially
responsible manner. The key stakeholders are customers, investors, parent
company, directors, employees, the community, legislators, pressure groups,
suppliers, and the media.
Simple measures to go green
Recycle paper, plastic, aluminum, ink
cartridges
Reuse packing materials and cardboard
boxes.
Use double-sided printing when possible.
Reduce paper transactions by going
digital for bill payment, vendor ordering, invoices, online banking, e-mail and
faxing directly from your computer.
Switch to rechargeable batteries. Large
office supply stores even have collection centers for recycling dead
rechargeable batteries.
Use eco-friendly cleaning products that
are biodegradable and non-toxic.
Purchase energy-efficient PCs, printers,
and other equipment.
Bibliography
Books Referred:
Philip
Kotler, Marketing Management , Patparganj
-
Magazines
Business world magazine, January 2009
