UNIVERSIDAD DE SAN CARLOS DE GUATEMALA ESCUELA DE POSTGRADO CIENCIAS ECONMICAS MAESTRA EN ADMINISTRACIN FINANCIERA CICLO PROPEDUTICO CATEDRTICA: MSC.

LICDA. LESBIA LEMUS SECCIN C

NEW TOOLS TO CAPTURE THE ELUSIVE GREEN CONSUMER

AMELIA VERNICA RAMREZ AGUSTN GRUPO NO. 5

GUATEMALA, 08 DE ABRIL DE 2011

NEW TOOLS TO CAPTURE THE ELUSIVE GREEN CONSUMER

Jacquelun Ottman, one of the first to write about this phenomenon, defines green marketing as a way for companies to create competitive advantage by communicating their environmental and social initiatives, so as to appeal to a wide range of stakeholders. Thus, in response to, and in anticipation of, growing consumer demand for such things, companies began to make a formal assessment of the environmental and human consequences of their products and services throughout their entire life cycles, from the gathering of raw materials and the manufacturing, stage, to their end use and final disposal. According to the market research group, Mintel, of the more than 13,000 new food and drink products it has tracked globally since 2005, a growing number are making green or sustainable claims, ostensibly in response to a surge in consumer demand. Todays consumers care not just about the quality and safety of the product itself, but where it comes from and how it was produced. So, boasting that products are recyclable and environmentally friendly, providing information on solar wind energy usage and carbon footprint emissions, being locally sourced and fairly traded-all of these claims strike the right note with the contemporary social conscience and heightened concern for environmental and human welfare. Our goal was to discern these peoples green predispositions and practices. Why? Some feel the reason that the green boom of the 90s failed to realize its full potential was partly due to a lack of understanding of what constituted the green consumer in the first place. Furthermore, much market research focuses on the behavior and attitudes of those out there and the products and services that we are going to sell to them In trying to determine purchasing decisions in a corporate context, what may mater more is discovering the various sources of influence that have a bearing on executives lives, in both their personal and professional domains. To start, there is quite a lot that executives can learn about why the green agenda floundered in the past. Since its emergence, green marketing has focused on mass consumer products and classic demographic segmentation.
In the past, green consumers have been portrayed as young, highly educated women, while others have correlated green purchasing with marital status, occupation and number of children. The behavior patterns of green consumers have been equally hard to nail. Some research has indicated that they hold extremely strong views on environmental problems are willing to pay a premium for

green products and will run a mile from any product or service that has a negative environmental impact. Finally, companies have adopted a number of false approaches to highlight the sustainable credentials of their products and services. Today, the lack of understanding about sustainability as a marketing opportunity persists, and the typical green consumer remains as elusive as ever.

Companies, for their part, have moved too quickly to replace products and services with new ones boasting green selling points, based on superficial market surveys indicating that these are what consumers want. Executives ability to translate sustainable habits at home into sustainable procurement at work depends on three major factors, as revealed through examples that respondents cited in relation to energy consumption. Understanding what makes people move from expressing a preference to actually purchasing green goods and services, either at home or work, is the first step in helping businesses to redefine and reposition their sustainability agendas in these tough economic times. Therefore, focusing on the locus of control of individuals within the company, rather than on the corporate procurement team perse, is one of the keys for driving organizational activities regarding sustainability efforts, and for discerning whether organizational factors are facilitating or impeding the adoption of sustainability practices. Based on our results, we can begin to group the elusive green consumer according to four different segments. Companies can support executives to integrate green values into procurement practices, as well as rethink their own product or service offerings, by keeping the following tips in mind. Focus on the individual and the tangible rewards for purchasing green products at home and at work. People continue to make hard evaluations of the economic benefits of green products. The role of advocacy groups is changing. Some are perceived as biased, so aligning your company too closely with one of these may be a risky move. If people make choices based on the richness of information available, then you must take advantage of social media.

The tendency for many firms in difficult times is to cut costs and corners and sustainability may be perceived as one of those unaffordable extras. But companies can treat the economic downturn as a window of opportunity for analyzing how they can better market green products and services, and advance sustainable procurement practices after all, the demands of economic competitiveness will eventually force companies to do so, so they might as well take positive advantage of the situation now.