AN EVALUATION STUDY OF GREEN MARKETING PRACTICES IN BIHAR: A REVIEW Dr. Amar Nath
Sr. Assistant Professor, Department of Management,
L.N.Mishra College of Business Management, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India
Abstract- This paper's primary goal is to review previous research on green marketing in developing nations and states. Green marketing could be utilised as a new tactic to both increase overall business success and protect the environment. According to earlier studies, implementing a green marketing strategy is essential for protecting the environment and offering consumers clean, green goods and services. Green products are made from recyclable materials and strive to reduce waste by utilising resources as efficiently as possible. Recycled paper, herbal goods, and energy-saving bulbs are a few examples of green products. These items are simple to recycle and help the environment by generating less trash during production. Environmental awareness is growing among businesses and consumers. Environmental deterioration can be considerably reduced by promoting green products among consumers, engaging in environmental activism, and enforcing strict rules.
Keywords: Green Marketing, Environment Marketing, Green Products, Ethical Marketing, Marketing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Earth's environmental dangers have gotten worse so quickly this century, with dwindling access to natural resources, ozone depletion, and shrinking agriculture.
(Eneizan et al, 2016a). Customers have started to adopt environmentally good practises as one of the treatments, for example, by using environmentally friendly household and transportation products.
Green marketing strategy is currently the new magic word for marketers to develop recycled goods, non-toxic goods, and environmentally friendly goods to suit client wants, and to have this benefit on a broad scale. (Eneizan et al, 2015a). The concept of the "green market" has emerged as a result of how important and critical the environment has grown in recent years, affecting all facets of human life. (Eneizan &
Obaid, 2016). As a result, environmental concerns are now one of the top priorities in developing nations. Therefore, in developing nations, environmental protection issues have taken the top spot. In this regard, the requirement to create environmentally friendly and environmentally friendly products has compelled corporations to devote more attention to environmental challenges in their enterprises. (Eneizan et al, 2016b). Consumers now consider their purchases in light of environmental concerns. (Eneizan et al, 2015c). Consumer behaviour is changing towards environmentally friendly or green items as a result of consumers' growing concern for environmental protection on a global scale
nowadays (Eneizan et al., 2018a).
Responsible and irresponsible businesses now have a competitive edge thanks to the growth of the green market, which motivates them to concentrate more on making environmentally friendly products.
(Eneizan & Abd Wahab, 2016).
Green marketing refers to all marketing initiatives that successfully meet human needs while having minimal negative environmental effects. Sales and advertising alone are not marketing. Green practises can also be incorporated into the creation of product ideas as well as their manufacture, packaging, marketing, and distribution. In light of this, the word is used to describe any marketing initiative meant to reduce a product's negative environmental effects, including product redesign, manufacturing, and integrated marketing communication efforts. Other names for green marketing include ecological or sustainable marketing, eco- marketing, and environmental marketing.
Although sustainability is controversial, sustainable marketing is synonymous with green marketing. Companies and governments face political, technological, and economic constraints, making it difficult to interpret and implement green marketing meaningfully. As green marketing is primarily concerned with the environment, environmental, social, and economic sustainability are integral to sustainable marketing. Innovative thinking in this field is driven by the needs of
consumers, involves extensive use of the company’s resources, and starts with consumers. Customers understand their duty for the environment in a green market, which stands in for human responsibility.
To address growing customer concerns about corporations' environmental impact, more businesses are adopting green practises. The goal of a company's green marketing strategy is to better satisfy its customers, investors, regulators, and stakeholders. Additionally, green marketing can enhance brand performance, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage.
According to a study by, individuals prefer to buy ecologically friendly products as they become more conscious of environmental issues.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Green marketing is worth investigating because of its relevance and the relative novelty of how businesses interact with natural environments. Green marketing has grown significantly over the past two decades, and knowledge on green marketing across different continents and diverse topics has grown proportionally.
According to Kotler, green marketers seek to change marketing practices, and at the foundation of green marketing (strategic and functional) lies the search for opportunities and decisions that can be harnessed by adopting green marketing practices. McDonagh and Prothero carried out a literature review of articles published from 1998 to 2013. A review study by categorized earlier literature reviews into thematic categories: green marketing functions, co-orientation, green marketing strategy, and consequences. These chapters summarized the literature on green marketing and key concepts and themes for future research. In, the author conducted a bibliometric study of Web of Science (WOS) articles published from 1977 to 2020, investigated with the primary objective of summarizing the current state of green marketing research and analyzing and presenting the results of the search after applying selected keywords. Over the past few years, green marketing has received much attention from scholars worldwide and as a result, various literature reviews on this topic have been published. For instance, Kar and Harichandan focused on the Scopus and Web of Science databases comprising data from 1121 articles
published between 1990 and 2021 in 462 journals. The results suggest that green marketing techniques, eco-tourism, and sustainable marketing techniques are increasingly important. Despite the attention of scholars, a thorough bibliometric analysis of the green marketing literature still needs to be completed. The concept of bibliometric analysis can be defined as a statistical analysis of scientific articles, book chapters, or books that have been published in the past and is a practical approach to gauge the impact of publications on the scientific community.
Biometric research reviews can be used to visualize a topic’s framework, identify emerging and current research topics, and summarize the most influential publications and academics. As part of our literature review process, we created mind maps to organize our literature review, mapped the study’s structural area, and compiled a bibliography to provide a complete picture of the literature. By analyzing the facts mentioned earlier, this bibliometric review attempts to draw attention to the numerous attributions related to “green marketing, sustainability, eco, and environmental marketing”. Based on the bibliometric analysis of 1348 articles published between 2011 and 2022, this analysis provides the first factual and statistical insight into research trends concerning green marketing and eco- marketing of green products. Furthermore, based on citations and an article’s impact, a review of the research on this topic is presented. Moreover, a green marketing practitioner must comprehend the types of literature developed and how they have grown, focusing on essential authors, distribution of articles, high-profile journal articles, and prominent publication outlets.
To accomplish this, in this paper, we will review peer-reviewed journal articles published in SCOPUS from 2011 to 2022 with the keywords “Green marketing” OR
“eco* marketing” OR “sustainable marketing” OR “Enviro* Marketing” OR
“Ethical marketing” to analyze the published literature related to green marketing; group articles by dominant themes; determine how it has evolved; and determine which publication outlets, articles, and authors have impacted the field based on citations and number of pieces. This contribution complements earlier literature reviews that emphasized a
context-specific approach and contributes to providing an explicit understanding of developments in green marketing literature.
This study aims to address five research objectives (ROs). These are as follows:
RO1-To develop a research profile of the selected studies in terms of journals, countries, and data analysis techniques.
RO2-To synthesize key trends and uncover additional aspects.
RO3-To appraise the research methods used by extant studies in terms of design and theories to identify open gaps.
RO4-To assess the findings and inferences of the selected studies to provide better insights.
RO5-To highlight areas of concern and opportunities for marketers, policymakers, and potential service providers.
3 GREEN MARKETING
According to Alhamad et al. (2019), green marketing, which is a consistent marketing process, is defined as the organisation's drive to configure, advance, decide the value, appropriate, and advance the products as far as ecological security measures. According to one definition of
"green marketing," it refers to all activities aimed at generating and empowering any trade meant to satiate human needs or desires while having little to no negative effects on Polonsky's natural surroundings.
(2011). According to Pollonsky (2011) and Alhamad et al. (2019), green marketing, which is a continuous marketing strategy, is defined as an organisation's effort to design, promote, determine the value of, distribute, and advance the products with regard to ecological assurance implies.
Green marketing has been characterized as all exercises intended to create and encourage any trades expected to fulfill human needs or needs, so as to give fulfilment, with insignificant unfavorable effects on the indigenous habitat by Polonsky (2011). Saini (2013) clarified that green showcasing is the way toward selling merchandise or potentially benefits dependent on natural advantages, where the exclusively merchandise or administrations are earth neighbourly just as the made items as well as bundled in an ecologically inviting manner. From the mid of 1990s, shoppers began to turn out to be
increasingly more naturally cordial and socially cognizant (Eneizan, 2019). During this period, basic buyers started to develop as another power green commercialization, they need the social duty from organizations (Gurau and Ranchhod, 2005).
In the interim, green consumers are characterized as individuals who stay away from items that may imperil the soundness of buyers or the others; making huge harm nature during fabricate, transfer, expending a lopsided measure of vitality; causing pointless wastage, utilizing fixings got from jeopardized species or the earth (Alhamdi et al, 2019a). The green customer centres around the accompanying exercises:
acquisition of items, for example, cleansers, which have a decreased natural effect;
dodging the items with vaporized; obtaining reused paper items; purchasing natural items; purchasing privately delivered nourishment; purchasing from a nearby store; searching for items utilizing less bundling; and utilizing their very own packs as opposed to utilizing plastic gave by the store (Eneizan, 2017). In the interim, the advantages of green advertising that can be felt by the association/organization as the maker of items/administrations, among others: (1) to guarantee long haul reasonable development with benefit; (2) to set aside cash in the long haul, in spite of the fact that from the start it took a tremendous cost; (3) to help organizations to sell their items and administrations by remembering their natural angles; (4) to help with getting to new markets and appreciating an upper hand; (5) most of representatives likewise feel pleased and dependable to work for an earth capable organization (Saini, 2013). Green promoting is finished by the organization to build the degree of mindfulness and to show that individuals are stressed over nature can plan something for tackle a few issues (Cherian and Jacob, 2012). In the meantime, Saini (2013) clarifies that an item can be guaranteed as a 'green' items on the off chance that they meet the accompanying criteria: (1) sparing water and vitality; (2) averting the contamination adds to air, water and soil; (3) securing the indoor air quality; (4) utilizing sustainable crude materials; (5) delivering minimal ecological effect; (6) being created by methods for naturally awareness; and (7) utilizing their very own sacks, rather than conveying a plastic gave by the store. The
four Ps of the green marketing mix are product, price, distribution, and promotion.
Additional elements included in the 7p marketing mix are employees, processes, and tangible evidence. Green products come from product-related decisions and actions that aim to conserve assets, lessen contamination, and reduce waste while also preserving or benefiting the native habitat.
The practises of green evaluation take into account both the financial and environmental costs of production and advertising while also providing some advantage for customers and a reasonable profit for business. Organizations can inform partners about their efforts, responsibilities, and successes in ecological protection by implementing green advancement programmes. Green distribution denotes the choice of directives in a manner that minimises natural harm.
Organizations that want to use green marketing as a business strategy are expected to make some changes in compliance with internal policies. The vast majority of customers are unaware of the size of green products due to a lack of information. Businesses can address this gap by implementing various green limited time approaches. The restriction of green products is something that customers specifically ask for in order to take care of and avoid environmental problems.
(Eneizan BM and Wahab KA, 2016).
Because of their importance in providing client support, employees are regarded as a fundamental variable for businesses (Alsakarneh et al., 2019; Noman et al., 2019; Eneizan et al., 2018b; Abdelqader Alsakarneh et al., 2018), all of which indicate that businesses need to prepare for them.
4 GREEN ADVERTISING AND OVERALL BUSINESS SUCCESS
According to Alhamdi et al. (2019b), Khan et al. (2019), Aymen et al. (2019), Al- Salaymeh (M. 2013), and Eneizan et al.
(2019), performance is a major concern for organisations. The marketing literature highlights the advantages of pursuing green activities, including increased financial profitability and market share, higher levels of employee engagement, expanded business performance, and improved capabilities. In addition to increasing customer loyalty and brand value, environmentally responsible actions also
reduce risks to the company, increasing corporate valuations. However, green special initiatives also result in lower stock returns. Green practises may also be used to raise money for cost reserves. Companies that reduce contamination and information sources that could produce waste would benefit from cost-saving incentives. green businesses in particular can also swiftly recover their financial investment in green initiatives by increasing energy productivity and reducing waste. For instance, DuPont invested $50 million in energy-saving projects in 2008 and successfully recouped this investment within just one year, resulting in favourable conditions for the company's future cost-saving efforts. The benefits and positive effects of green activities on business operations are apparent, but it's important to gain a deeper understanding of how green advertising strategies affect business operations. (Cronin, 2011). Companies are made up of a variety of people, and they frequently deal with a wide range of personal difficulties on a business level.
Neoclassical finance theory holds that corporations are responsible for creating an incentive for investors; nevertheless, increasingly thorough types of execution are also crucial. The fundamental standard identifies the estimation of what is made precisely. Marketing and board academics advise improving multidimensional proportions of significant worth, such as the triple major concern (TBL), which includes not only financial value but also social and ecological worth. The primary fundamental interest of a company is still its financial performance. Concentrates that consider the display of traditional and conscientious businesses continue to use conventional financial measurements as opposed to multidimensional TBL-type indicators. Expanding the budgetary primary concern is emphasized, making clear the growing research enthusiasm for focusing on green consumers and removing more of an incentive from them rather than exclusively concentrating on the impact of marketing on society. An alternative viewpoint highlights green advertising's transformative role and dedication to customers, society, and the environment.
Whatever the case, the importance of benefits, offers, and other financial or promotional tactics must be considered for the planet. Nature isn't properly addressed
on business administration sheets, according to Polonsky (2011), nor is it taken into account in the majority of corporate decisions.
5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
(i) Method - To identify, comprehend, and assess new trends, approaches, discoveries, and advancements in the field of green marketing research, we used bibliometric statistical tools in this study. A statistical technique called bibliometrics can help to give a clear picture of publication trends in research papers, publications, and other media.
(ii) Lookup Query-The following search phrases were used in our investigation, as indicated in Figure 1, to access the Scopus database: "Green marketing" OR "eco*
marketing" OR "sustainable marketing" OR
"Enviro* Marketing" OR "Ethical marketing."
(iii) Data Choice- There are many databases that can be used for abstraction and indexing. Databases can be divided into two groups: subject-specific databases like MEDLINE, PubMed, AGRICOLA, and ERIC, as well as multidisciplinary databases like Scopus and Web of Science. SCOPUS, which abstracts scientific databases, offers precise indexing, and has high-caliber articles, provided the data for our study. It's possible that Google Scholar will display a different amount of citations. As a search engine, Google Scholar includes far more content than Scopus, such as theses, conference papers, reviews, books, book chapters, letters, data papers, and even unpublished materials.
(iv) The inclusion and exclusion standards- The normative guidelines provided in PRISMA should be followed
while conducting a systematic review. The PRISMA standards state that articles must go through several steps of screening before being considered similarly. From a total of records that were collected from the Scopus database against the keywords, we took into account publications from 2011 to 23 May 2022. The identified papers were reviewed using a three-step procedure.
Locating, getting rid of, and fixing duplicate records.
Examining the articles in light of the inclusion and exclusion standards.
Using the title, abstract, and keyword criteria to read and review the material.
(v) Analysis of the Literature- This section displays the findings of a bibliometric analysis of green marketing articles published between 2011 and May 2022.
Several software programmes are frequently used for bibliometric analysis, including CiteSpace, RStudio (bibliometrics package), BibExcel, VOSviewer, Gephi, and Histcite.
This investigation was carried out using VOSviewer for a number of reasons. To make our findings more understandable to readers from many fields, VOSviewer was utilised to illustrate the field's clusters and cross-disciplinary mapping. In addition, cluster analysis makes it easier to classify samples into smaller groups for analysis that is more straightforward. The Scopus database reveals that studies focused on topics connected to sustainable products have been conducted for more than 50 years. Despite the fact that specialists have been working on this subject since 1964, there has been an a rise in the quantity of studies on the subject since 2006.
Figure 1 Conceptualization of keywords
Sustainable
Eco*
Enviro*
Marketing Ethical
Green
6 CONCLUSION
Marketers must confront and address escalating ecological issues in order to ensure that development is sustainable over the long term. The basic theme running across the entire framework of sustainable development is the necessity of integrating economic and natural considerations into fundamental leadership by putting policies in place that keep an eye on agricultural advances and ecological insurance. Natural security for the current population as well as future generations is what the end product of green marketing is. Green marketing encourages sensible improvement by advancing energy-efficient activities, improved contamination controls, recyclable and biodegradable packaging, and biologically safe products. In this sense, green marketing is a means of achieving the more general goal of reasonable advancement. It implies a system of medium- to long-term planning that recognises and addresses potential asset shortages and destitution gaps;
provides opportunities for supportive exchange monetary, creation, and employment models; and plans to secure advancement and development opportunities as well as the effects of ecological corruption. Believability is key to good green marketing. Never make unjustified demands or exaggerate natural circumstances while communicating;
always be straightforward and use reliable sources.
The main goal of this study is to provide a summary of the existing research on green marketing. To encourage sustainable consumption, developing and developed nations must do green marketing research. However, no bibliometric analysis that summarises and provides a thorough analysis of the advancements in the literature has been carried out from 2011 to 2022 for the Scopus database using the keywords specified above. The study's data visualisation demonstrates how researchers in green marketing may help develop solutions for subjects that are currently being researched in the field. To find research gaps and insights that might lead to discoveries, we have also determined the most significant authors, published articles, and publications in this field.
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