Abstract
Environmental concern as the combination of marketing management discipline has appeared recently and inconsistently. The nucleus and essential elements of green marketing is sustainability in all spheres of business. Green marketing isabout marketing a product or service having eco-friendly feature and aiming at win-win situation for both consumers and organizations. The study on green marketing is important because as human beings, our dwelling place is environment. For the temporary benefits of human race, humans are involved in polluting the environment. Hence, the efforts of corporate in attaining sustainability are studied through green marketing strategies of durable goods manufacturing sector. The study is conducted with objectives to identify the parameters influencing companies to take up green marketing, to assess the relative strength of Green Marketing Mix Strategies (GMMS), to evaluate the GMMS adopted, to analyze the impact of GMMS on marketing performance, to identify the perception of dealers towards green marketing adopted by respective companies and understanding the factors influencing consumers to take up green products.
The findings revealed that the major four parameters influencing companies to take up green marketing are ‘Environmental Concern’, ‘Marketing Performance’, ‘CSR’ and ‘Process’. On the whole, Product related GMMS was given more importance by the selected companies. The marketing performance of the selected companies was more influenced by Place and promotion related GMMS. The dealers of selected companies had positive response towards GMMS adopted by their parent companies. From the view point of consumers, it was noticed that ‘environmental concern’, ‘product’ and‘promotion’ were the three important factors that influence consumers to take up green products. Further, suggestions are given based on findings followed by general discussion, future perspective of green marketing; implications tomanagers and direction for future research are discussed in detail. To conclude, green marketing plays a vital role in environmental management of any country. Development of eco-friendly products and service is a trend seen throughout the world. Polluted environment implies an increased burden on society in terms of health, hygiene and cost which impact on countries economy. Companies are spending huge amount of money on research and development to introduce green/ eco-friendly products in the market. To recover the same cost and protect the environment, marketing of green products is very important without indulging in green washing.
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