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Changing Perspective of Management: Revisit the existing and Explore the Novel Ideas - Conference Proceedings 2011 March 10 - 12, Kathmandu, Nepal

Green Marketing Initiatives of the

Indian Corporates: An Empirical Study
P. Marishkumar
V.M.K.V. Engineering College,Vinayaka Missions University,Tamil Nadu, India.

B. Rajnarayanan
V.M.K.V. Engineering College,Vinayaka Missions University,Tamil Nadu, India.

Introduction
There is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding
protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates that people are concerned
about the environment and are changing their behavior. As a result of this,
green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable
and socially responsible products and services. It is seen that most of the
consumers, both individual and industrial, are becoming more concerned about
environment friendly products. Most of them feel that environment friendly
products are safe to use. Thus, green marketing has emerged, which aims at
marketing sustainable and socially responsible products and services. Now is the
era of recyclable, non-toxic and environment friendly goods. This has become the
new mantra for marketers to satisfy the needs of consumers and earn better
profits. The Indian consumer is evolving rapidly and with the democratization of
media, global trends reach India much more rapidly than in the past. Companies
are adopting green technology and methods such as water and electricity
conservation techniques, rainwater harvesting, eco-friendly waste disposal
and
other processes. Trends in the industry in terms of products and services
include use of paper bags instead of plastic bags, use of CNG, biodegradable
detergents and soaps, environment friendly sprays, use of natural dyes, organic
vegetables and fruits, non-polluting fuel and HCFC-free refrigerators are ruling the
markets today. There is a new breed of green minded consumers who are opting for
these environment friendly products. Currently, the number of these green
consumers might be less but the future holds a strong possibility of increase in
these green consumers. In general, green marketing is a much broader concept
that can be applied to consumer goods, industrial goods and even services. Thus
green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product
modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes as well as
modifying advertising.

Concept of Green Marketing

There is a common perception among the general population that the term green
marketing refers only to advertising or promoting products that possess
environmental characteristics. People associate terms such as recyclable with
green marketing. Green marketing, while incorporating these claims, is a broader
concept. It includes not only altering the advertising of a product but also a
variety of activities such as altering production processes, changing
packaging and modifying products. Polonsky defines green marketing as all
activities

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designed to generate and facilitate any exchanges intended to satisfy human

needs or wants, such that the satisfaction of these needs and wants occurs, with
minimal detrimental impact on the natural environment.
This question of why green marketing is important has increased in importance. It
is quiet simple and relies on the basic definition of economics. Economics is the
study of how people use their limited resources to try to satisfy unlimited wants.
Thus mankind has limited resources on the earth, with which he must attempt
to provide for the worlds unlimited wants. In market societies, where there is
freedom of choice, it has generally been accepted that individuals and
organizations have the right to attempt to have their wants satisfied. As firms face
limited natural resources, they must develop new or alternative ways of satisfying
these unlimited wants. Ultimately green marketing looks at how marketing
activities utilize these limited resources, while satisfying consumes wants, both of
individuals and industry, as well as achieving the selling organizations objectives.

Why Companies Going for Green Marketing

When looking through the literature there are several reasons for firms increased
use of green marketing. The possible reasons are mentioned herein below:
1. Moral Obligation: Organizations believe they have a moral obligation to be
more socially responsible. Governmental bodies are forcing firms to become
more responsible.
2. An Opportunity: Organizations perceives environmental marketing to be an
opportunity that can be used to achieve its objectives.
3. Cost Factors: Cost factors associated with waste disposal, or reductions in
material usage forces firms to modify their behaviour. Reduction of harmful
waste may lead to substantial cost savings. Sometimes, many firms develop
symbiotic relationship whereby the waste generated by one company is used by
another as a cost-effective raw material.
4. Competitors Strategy: In many cases firms observe competitors
promoting
their environmental behaviors and attempt to imitate this
behaviour. In some instances this competitive pressure has caused an entire
industry to modify and thus reduce its detrimental environmental behavior.
Competitors environmental activities pressure firms to change their
environmental marketing activities.
5. Limited Resources: As resources are limited, it is important for the marketers
to utilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the
organizations objective. Therefore, green marketing is inevitable.
6. Governmental Pressures: Various regulations are framed by the
government to protect consumers and the society at large. The Indian
government too has developed a framework of legislations to reduce the
production of harmful goods and by products. These reduce the industrys
production and consumers consumption of harmful goods, including those
detrimental to the environment; for example, the ban of plastic bags in Mumbai,
prohibition of smoking in public areas, etc.

Corporate Initiatives
Green marketing is a vital constituent of the holistic marketing concept. It is
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particularly applicable to businesses that are directly dependent on the physical

environment; for example,

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industries like fishing, processed foods, and tourism and adventure sports. Changes
in the physical environment may pose a threat to such industries. Many Indian
giants are now successfully implementing green marketing practices.
Infosys: Infosys is working to install lighting systems to make optimum use of
daylight and attain maximum efficiency through artificial lighting. The company
was also planning to procure green power to reduce emissions. Meanwhile, Infosys
has replaced the old hardware with more energy efficient hardware. The new PCs
and laptops the company is purchasing comply with environmental standards.
Infosys has already started consolidating its server systems. The company has
consolidated 185 individual file servers across the world into 33
Network Attached Storage infrastructures. For any future needs to increase the
server capacity,
they will be adding the disks to the Network Attached Storage infrastructure,
instead of adding the file server.
Maruti: As part of its green city drive, Maruti Udyog Limited is working towards
fitting compressed natural gas kits on all its petrol driven vehicles, including its
bread-and-butter car Maruti 800. The company has already drawn up plans to
promote CNG vehicles in Delhi in the current fiscal. CNG is a viable alternative fuel
since it offers lower emissions and has an extremely low running cost with an
average fuel consumption of 19.6 km/kg and cost of Rs
11.30 per
kg.
TESCO: TESCO is pumping $200mn into environmental technologies to reduce the
amount of energy they use by 50 per cent compared with 2000 levels, by 2010. In
addition to building 80 new eco-stores across Britain over the next year, the
greenest of which will be constructed of recycled materials and will burn food waste
for electricity, they are also making small changes that could have big results.
They are paying customers not to use plastic bags which they expect would cut
consumption by 25 per cent in two years.
Wipro: Homegrown companies like Wipro, too, are all for green products. The
company, last year, launched a greenware range of desktops and laptops
fully compliant as per the restriction of hazardous substances directive.
Titan Industries: It is adopting an eco-friendly process for recycling the discarded
watches. It has launched an exchange offer where in an old watch bought
from customers will be discarded in an eco-friendly manner.

Statement of the Problem

No matter why a firm uses green marketing, there are a number of potential
problems that they must overcome. One of the main problem is that a firm
using green marketing must ensure that their activities are not misleading to
consumer or industry, and do not breach any of the regulations or laws dealing
with environmental marketing. Another problem that a firm faces is that those who
modify their products due to increased consumer concern must contend with the
fact that consumers perceptions are sometimes not correct. Take for example the
McDonalds ongoing scientific debate, which are more environments friendly. Some
scientific evidence suggests that when taking a cradle-to-grave approach,
polystyrene is less environmentally harmful. If this is the case McDonalds bowed to
consumer pressure, yet has chosen the more environmentally harmful option.
When firms attempt to become socially responsible, they may face the risk that the
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environmentally responsible action of today will be found to be harmful in future.

Take for example, the Aerosol industry, which has switched from
chlorofluorocarbons to hydro fuorocarbons only to be told. Hydro fuorocarbons are
also

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greenhouse gas. Given the limited scientific knowledge at any point in time, it may
be impossible for a firm to be certain that they have made a correct environmental
decision. This may explain why firms like Coca-Cola and Walt Disney World, are
becoming socially responsible without publicizing the point. They may protect
themselves from potential future negative fashback, if it is determined that they
made a wrong decision in the past. Many organizations want to turn green, as to
increase number of consumers and to associate themselves with environmentalfriendly products. But there are certain problems which are associated with green
marketing such as: confusion among the consumers regarding the products; one
often finds distrust regarding the credibility of green products; the technology
involved in production and marketing of eco-friendly products is difficult to
adopt due to huge costs involved. The additional costs involved may ultimately
increase the price of the final product. This will cause a fall in the demand for the
companys product reducing its customer base. For instance with the adoption of
EURO I & EURO II standards by the car manufacturers in India, the prices of cars
have risen sharply making them beyond the reach of average consumers.
All firms who undertake environmental marketing activities may not actually
improve their behaviour. In some cases firms have misled consumers in an attempt
to gain market share. In other cases firms have jumped on the green bandwagon
without considering the accuracy of their behaviour, their claims, or the
effectiveness of their products. This lack of consideration of the true greenness of
activities may result in firms making false or misleading green marketing claims.
One of the main problems is that firms using green marketing must ensure that
their activities are not misleading to consumers or industry, and do not breach any
of the regulations or laws dealing with environmental marketing. While
governmental regulation is designed to give consumers the opportunity to make
better decisions or to motivate them to be more environmentally responsible, there
is difficulty in establishing policies that will address all environmental issues.
There is a difficulty in measuring the ROI on green products. There are problems
in understanding the application of regulations. Large capital manufacturing
investments required to handle greener materials and greener investments. If firms
make the packaging of their brands smaller, they may be at a disadvantage
because of the reduced visibility of their brands on retail shelves. In this context, an
attempt was made to assess the perception of 300 consumers about the green
marketing practices of the select Indian companies.

Objectives of the Study

To study the need and importance of green marketing in
general.

To review the green marketing initiatives of the Indian

corporates.

To study the perception of the consumers towards green marketing practices

of the select
Indian
companies.

To suggest suitable measures for the effective green marketing process of the
companies.

Testing of Hypothesis
The study is based on the formulation of the following null hypothesis. H0: The
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demographic variables of the consumers such as gender, age, educational status,

and income, do not have any infuence on their perception towards green
marketing practices of the select Indian companies.

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Research Design
This study is empirical in nature based on survey method. The consumers of
Wipro, Infosys and Titan Industries are selected for this study. As an essential part
of the study, the primary data were collected from 300 consumers. The scope of
the study is evaluating the perception of the consumers towards green marketing
practices of the select Indian companies. By adopting quota sampling, 300
respondents i.e. 100 consumers from each company are selected. Questionnaire
method was employed to collect the primary data. The secondary data were
collected from journals, reports, books, and records of the companies. In order to
study the perception of the consumers, chi square test, analysis of co-efficient of
variation, multiple regression analysis, and percentage analysis were employed.
The chi square test was employed to measure the association between the
satisfaction levels of the consumers belonging to different demographic variables
towards green marketing practices of the select Indian companies. The co-efficient
of variation was employed to find out the consistency in the satisfaction level of the
respondents towards green marketing practices. Multiple regression analysis was
used to examine the impact of the personal variables of the respondents on their
satisfaction with green marketing practices.

Findings
1. There is no significant relationship between the satisfaction levels of the
respondents belonging to different gender, age, and education and the green
marketing practices of the select Indian companies. However, a significant
association is found between the satisfaction levels of the respondents
belonging to different income groups and the green marketing practices.
2. The female respondents, respondents of the age group above 50 years,
respondents belonging to postgraduate qualification, and respondents
belonging to monthly income up to Rs. 25000 are highly satisfied with the green
marketing practices of the select Indian companies.
3. The variation in the satisfaction level was high among the female respondents,
among the respondents belonging to 31-40 years, among the respondents
holding postgraduate qualification, among the respondents earning monthly
income Rs. 25001-30000 with the green marketing practices of the select Indian
companies.
4.

The gender, age, educational status and monthly income of the

consumers have no significant effect on their satisfaction with the green
marketing practices of the Indian companies.

5.

About 50 per cent of the respondents are highly satisfied with the
green
marketing strategies followed in product, price, promotion, and
distribution functions of the select Indian companies.

6.

Misleading the consumers, lack of wide publicity, proliferation of

regulations and guidelines, and lack of truthfulness in advertisement are the
problems of the consumers with regard to green marketing practices of the
companies.

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Suggestions
1. The companies those practice green marketing must environmentally be
responsible.
Because todays consumers are looking for more and they are looking at how
the product addresses to different dimensions of sustainability, such as
environmental impact, social impact, and economic feasibility.
2. In general, the customers are bothered about their own benefit and not on the
profit of the company. For that reason, the companies shall make them to
understand how they are benefited by using the product or service. Moreover,
the companies need to judge whether the customers are educated enough or
they are learning what it means to be green. When the consumers are still in
the learning process, the companies can take efforts to teach them how
using the product and service is beneficial as well as for the environment.
3. When the consumers understand the need of being environment friendly
they
will certainly purchase the company product or avail its service.
Therefore, through consumer education, they can make a change in their
decision and can stop using products that are harmful for the environment.
Then the consumers will turn to the company knowing that it can help them do
something for the planet even on local scale.
4. The advertisement of the company must address a relationship between a
product or service and the biophysical environment to promote a green lifestyle
by highlighting a product or service. Moreover, the advertisement must present
a corporate image of environmental responsibility. Truth in advertising is
critical. Therefore, the companies can do away with hype and promote the
truth in their advertisements.
5. The best way to convince the customers is to offer proof. If the product or
service do some good to the customer as well as to the environment it is
great. Therefore, the company shall share the fact with people and what can
be a better way other than offering proof.
6. Price is an important factor in the green marketing blend. Most consumers are
prepared to pay additional value if there is a perception of extra product value.
This value may be as a result of improved performance, function, design, visual
appeal, or taste. Therefore the companies can take all these factors into
consideration while fixing a premium price. The price of the product should
meet the expectation of the customers. High-end customers often dont mind
paying more and will never question about price. In order to attract the nonpremium customers, maintenance of an affordable price rate is so important.
7. Sustainability initiatives and marketing is to be real and authentic. Corporate
transparency is at this moment the way of the world. Consumers dont
expect the company to be perfect, but they do expect to be honest. Therefore
the companies should not mislead the consumers. Because around 62 per cent
of the respondents opine that they are mis-leaded.
8. The ecological objectives of the companies in planning products are to
reduce resource consumption and pollution and to upkeep of scarce
resources.
Furthermore,
the companies can conduct global warming
campaign to make wide publicity for green marketing.

Conclusion
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Green marketing covers more than a firms marketing claims. While firms must
bear much of the responsibility for environmental degradation, ultimately it is
consumers who demand

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goods, and thus create environmental problems. It must be remembered that it is

the uncaring consumer who chooses to disposes of their waste in an inappropriate
fashion. While firms can have a great impact on the natural environment, the
responsibility should not be theirs alone. It appears that consumers are not overly
committed to improving their environment and may be looking to lay too much
responsibility on industry and government. Ultimately green marketing requires
that consumers want a cleaner environment and are willing to pay for it, possibly
through higher priced goods, modified individual lifestyles, or even governmental
intervention. Until this occurs it will be difficult for firms alone to lead the green
marketing revolution. It must not be forgotten that the industrial buyer also has the
ability to pressure suppliers to modify their activities. Thus an environmental
committed organization may not only produce goods that have reduced their
detrimental impact on the environment, they may also be able to pressure their
suppliers to behave in a more environmentally responsible fashion. Final
consumers and industrial buyers also have the ability to pressure organizations to
integrate the environment into their corporate culture and thus ensure all
organizations minimize the detrimental environmental impact of their activities.

References
Chatterjee, Nandita (2008) Green Packaging: Its Need and Acceptance
among the
Educated Consumers, Mangalmay Journal of Management and Technology.

Coddington, Walter (1993) Environmental Marketing: Positive Strategies for

Reaching the
Green Consumer, New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.

Davis, Joel J. (1992) Ethics and Green Marketing, Journal of Business Ethics 11
(2): 81-87.

Keller, G. M. (1987) Industry

Philosophy Vital
Speeches 54 (5): 154-157.

and

the

Environment:

Toward

New

Mishra Rohit Kumar: A Conceptual Framework on Green Marketing

Bhubaneshwar.

Narayan, Vemuri Lakshmi and Babu, S. Dhinesh: Green Marketing New

Hopes and
Challenges.

National Association of Attorneys-General (1990) The Green Report:

Findings and Preliminary Recommendations for Responsible Advertising. USA:
National Association of Attorneys-General.

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Changing Perspective of Management: Revisit the existing and Explore the Novel Ideas - Conference Proceedings 2011 March 10 - 12, Kathmandu, Nepal

171

Academia: An Ideal Practicing Ground for

Process Consultation

Gupta

Neha

Centre for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC), Indian School of Business, India

Kumar

Rajeev

Management Development Centre, Larsen & Toubro, India

What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than

how valuable we are.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The CrackUp)

Abstract
In
todays
era
of accelerated
change and uncertainty, there is
an
unprecedented need for teachers to play the role of a facilitator in developing the
diagnostic and problem solving skills of the students. This is refected in the course
outlines of several reputed business schools in India and abroad, where the
instructors often designate themselves as facilitators of learning and
dissemination of knowledge. For instance, annual handbooks and/or course outlines
of business schools namely Indian School of Business, Harvard Business
School, Wharton Business School, Indian Institute of Management, and the like use
the term facilitator for the course instructors to distinguish themselves from the
traditional perception of a teacher who predominantly focuses on delivering her/his
lectures with scant attention to problem solving capability building of the students.
A close look at the underlying characteristics of the teacher-student relationship
reveals the implicit yet powerful correlation with Process Consultation. This paper
explores the idea of application of process consultation in the educational
institutions to foster individual (students) effectiveness. It attempts to extend the
notion of consultation beyond conventional industry to classroom setting to
develop the self-refexive, self-analytic, and self-renewing skills of the students in
the educational institutions.
Keywords: Process consultation;
capability building, students

educational

institutions;

problem

solving;

Introduction
Scharmer defines four levels of change namely 1) Re-structuring, 2) Re-designing,
3) Re- framing, and 4) Re-generating i.e. the deepest level of change which
emanates from change in will/purpose. The greatest challenge encountered by the
process consultants today is to help people and organizations access and operate
from a deeper and more subtle level of organizational learning and change.
(Schein, Kahane, & Scharmer, 2001). This paper attempts to extend the
conventional approach to consulting to the classroom setting where teachers help
the students uncover and develop their full potential and thus empower
themselves.

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Changing Perspective of Management: Revisit the existing and Explore the Novel Ideas - Conference Proceedings 2011 March 10 - 12, Kathmandu, Nepal

The rhetoric of holistic development of child is unvarying since times immemorial

and the process consultation model can emerge as a viable method to bridge the
reality-rhetoric gap in educational institutions. The impetus for this paper comes
from the evidence of improvement in
inter-personal
relationships
and
performance of groups with the help of process consultation (e.g. Schmuck
(1979), Schmuck et al. (1969), Friedlander (1967), Argyris (1965)). This paper
argues that the application of process consultation in the educational institutions
can enhance the effectiveness of the learners by fostering their self-refective, selfanalytic and self-renewing capabilities.
In
this
approach,
the
teacher
doesnt provide
direct answers/solutions to the
students for the immediate problems, but encourages a refexive openness and
honesty about how they are addressed (Cooke, 1997). Even though a process
consultation model in pedagogy will have the merits of being more developmental
in nature, and empowering students to solve their own problems (Schein, 1987); it
is not suggested that the process approach can fully replace or merge with the
current teaching practices.

Research Literature
There is ample evidence to prove that process problems can hamper the groups
effectiveness. Maier and Solem (1952) demonstrated the negative impact of
suppression of minority views in decision making in a group scenario. Zand (1972)
has shown the adverse effect of mistrust on the ability of the group members to
communicate, co-operate and make decisions, thereby impairing the groups
performance. Hence, it is reasonable to hypothesize that a technique designed to
remove or mitigate process problems can increase effectiveness of the group
members (Kaplan, 1979).
Argyris (1962) established a connection between attention to process and work
effectiveness. The study by Schmuck et al (1969) demonstrated the positive effects
of multi-faceted process intervention at a school like improved teacher-principal
relationship, lower teacher turnover, and an improved process in staff meeting.
A large scale study of four types of OD interventions revealed that
interpersonal process consultation had a positive effect on social variables like
organizational climate, leadership, group performance, satisfaction. Although the
performance was not explicitly measured, enhanced effectiveness can be induced
from improved group process (Bowers, 1973). In another experiment, the groups
that were trained using process consultation at an armed force R&D laboratory
displayed greater personal involvement, mutual infuence and group effectiveness
(Freidlander, 1967).
In a laboratory experiment on undergraduates, quantitative problems were
assigned to the groups. The results showed that groups using process analysis were
more cohesive and functioned better but did not perform better than the control
groups (Lipshitz & Sherwood,
1978). Kaplan (1969) found that the participants (undergraduate students)
reported higher
satisfaction from interpersonal relationships where the group task consisted of
solving three cases on human relations.

Reviewing Process Consultation

The intellectual roots of process consultation can be traced to the concept of
group dynamics by Kurt Lewin in circa 1940s (Lewin, 1948). Edgar H. Schein, who is
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Changing Perspective of Management: Revisit the existing and Explore the Novel Ideas - Conference Proceedings 2011 March 10 - 12, Kathmandu, Nepal

credited with the popularization of the term process consultation as well as its use
as a consulting tool, defined it as 'a set of activities on the part of the consultant
that help the client to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events that
occur in the client's environment in order to improve the situation'

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