Global green branding

Zia Daniell Wigder | January 04, 2008, 07:07 AM

This past holiday season has brought much attention to the issue of green marketing, with several studies pointing to the growing number of US consumers who made purchase decisions based on environmental concerns. Companies are scrambling to highlight their green initiatives in hopes of attracting the increasingly aware American consumer.

While green marketing has recently become a hot topic in the US, it’s well known that many companies outside of the US have been thinking about this issue for years. Some European countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, for example, have had environmental labeling on their products for decades (the first article I ever published was on this topic back in 1990). It’s not surprising that many leading green corporate initiatives have come from European companies; European consumers are still believed to be more environmentally aware than their American counterparts.

The environment is also becoming an increasingly important issue in Asia. In addition to the attention this topic has garnered in China with the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing, other countries are zeroing in on the environmental topic. In Japan, a recent study by ad agency Hakuhodo found that those concerned about environmental issues increased from 49 to 64 percent during the past year, while those interested in global warming issues jumped from 81 percent to 93 percent. Other countries such as South Korea that have been perceived as lagging in the environmental area are now starting to turn their attention to the issue.

Just as US companies are now starting to understand the need for environmental initiatives in their home market, so, too, should they be considering and highlighting their environmental initiatives in a global context (see GE’s international sites for an example). As with companies’ broader international strategies, however, there is a strong need to understand consumer behavior on a country level.

For example, in Europe, over a quarter of European online shoppers would pay more for green products, or would be influenced by a company's environmental policy. Yet on a country-by-country basis, the percentages vary greatly. In Denmark, some 58 percent of online consumers said they’d pay more for environmentally friendly products; in Germany, this figure was just 14 percent. Similar skews exist in the percentages of those consumers influenced by corporate environmental policies (for a more in-depth look at this topic, see my colleague Dorothee Vogel’s recent report on European Green Consumers).

Green marketing, highlighted as the “trendiest marketing buzzword” for US marketers in 2008, should be part of a global as well as a domestic strategy. Marketers must, however, bear in mind that user attitudes and behavior will vary greatly by country, and adjust both their offerings and expectations accordingly.