By Dan Estabrook – September 25, 2008
With many companies on the verge of greenwashing with “green this” and “green that” showing up more in more in their product messaging, one has to ask how important is it that a product be green as a selling attribute.
A TDG report out today looked at green messaging for PC buyers. The study found that attributes such as functionality, brand, and price will continue to matter most to consumer PC buyers. In fact, the study ranked functionality the most important attribute and environmental friendliness the least important. But it also found that while energy efficiency and enviornmental friendliness are secondary, these attributes may play a role if the primary attributes are similar across products.
At GreenDimes, we plant five trees for each Premium junk mail reduction service that our customers purchase. While tree planting is part of our “green marketing,” our research shows that our members rank it lower than they do eliminating their junk mail — the actual problem that we solve for them. Would our customers still have purchased GreenDimes if we didn’t plant trees? Probably, but where I see our green messaging play a role is similar to that of the PC study data — I hear tree planting come up as an important attribute when comparing our company to our competitors.
If marketing exists to convince consumers that your product solves a major problem in their lives, perhaps consumers don’t see environmental friendliness as solving a big problem. To state a different way, in spite of all the press that greening our lives is getting (case in point – this blog), maybe consumers don’t see global warming, melting glaciers and plastic floating around the Pacific as a big enough problem to drive their purchase decisions (yet)!
I also know that it is easy to say “enough consumers are buying green so I don’t have to.” The problem with this logic is that if everyone thinks this way, we aren’t solving a bigger problem than owning a functional PC or getting off junk mail lists. The problem of our threatened existence on the planet.
So, as a green blogger I will continue to yell, scream, rant and rave to make sure that we have a problem to solve — for which we need solutions (including greener products). Only then will the millions and millions spent on green marketing really matter.
Someone get me a megaphone…!