Page 38 - index
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ETHICS: OPINION
Move from greenwashing
to a cleaner and more
sustainable business sector
Growing consumer concern While greenwashing terminology pay 10% or more for food and beverage PHOTOS: ISTOCKPHOTO, SUPPLIED
over the environment too was first applied to misleading cases items sold by businesses engaged in
frequently translates into of environmental advertising, today it green observances (Dutta et al., 2008).
greenwashing strategies encompasses a wide range of corporate
instead of a corporate culture activities such as environmental In a mail survey conducted in the
that has genuine concern for reporting, event sponsorship and United Kingdom in 1993, female
the planet. This is unethical even the distribution of educational consumers indicated that 79% of them
and must change, says materials and the formation of ‘front would pay up to 40% more for products
Prof. Angelo Nicolaides. groups’ to create positive impressions which were proven to be green (Myburgh-
in the minds of consumers. Louw and O’ Shaughnessy, 1994).
OVER THE PAST DECADE
greenwashing has emerged as Perhaps this approach is not Keng, et al. (2012), conducted an
a highly controversial practice surprising, given that there’s ample e-mail survey and asked if potential
in advertising and marketing. Derived evidence of consumers being willing guests would pay more to stay in a
from ‘whitewashing’ – the deliberate to pay more for products and services hotel that was environmentally more
concealment of an unpalatable truth that they deem to be friendly to sustainable. It also asked how much
– it has seen many organisations the environment. more they were willing to pay. Thirty
move to portray themselves as being percent of respondents said they would
environmentally responsible in order to Coddington (1990) asserted in 1989 pay more and 37% indicated they were
achieve strategic competitive advantage. that 67% of American consumers happy with a bill increase of 5%.
were willing to pay up to 10% more for
ecologically friendly products. Similarly, CLAIM RELIABILITY
a survey of US restaurant customers Sadly, many companies are tempted
showed they were more than happy to to promote their highly questionable
36 strategicmarketing October 2016 – January 2017
