Effects of Green Marketing on Consumer

Behavior
Akash Rana (B-04), Ankit Chauhan (B-07), Garvita Srivastava (B-18), Gaurav Kar (B-19) and
Naveen Khola (B-34)
MBA, Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune
E-ID: ankit.chauhan2022@sims.edu

Abstract: Today majority of the consumers display their concern about environmental
degradation, there is expanding mindfulness with respect to environment which has
prompted a move in the everyday lives of buyers. Thus, there’s shift towards a green way
of life has led individuals to attempt to decrease human impression on the nature. Green
showcasing has developed specific significance in the cutting-edge market and mentality of
the shopper has constrained organization arrangement in accordance to shopper behavior,
and earth satisfying way. This investigation focuses on some purchaser response and
conduct with respect to green promoting and publicizing, thought, new green undertakings
in India, and exceptional publicizing mix. It also features future possibilities, advantages,
significance, and capability of Green advertising in India. Components like accessibility,
cost, and brand name are considered by a shopper before buying green items. Purchasers
are not excessively dedicated to their current circumstance since purchaser's see that they
are paying a lot for the items. Green showcasing ought to be converged with instructing
customers about the advantages; so, the purchaser may not feel being bamboozled when
buying green items.
Keywords: Green Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Sustainability, Environment, Strategies

1. Introduction change in climatic conditions. Majority of

customers are now worried about
During latter part of 20th century earth’s
environmental degradation. They are
ozone depletion, climate change, jungle
constantly researching the effect that a
depletion, and substantial loss of ecosystems
product can have on the world during its life
have been endangered by substantial
or during its disposal. This gives a big boost
economic and population growth globally.
to green goods. A related explanation is
Everyone in the world is becoming more
strategic advantage and/or opportunity for
conscious of the environmental pressures
profits that some of the businesses are now
imposed on the planet by fellow human
noticing in green branding. As a result,
beings (Chauhan, 2012). Media sources
green marketing awareness has been
cover a significant portion of environmental
growing, thus customers have started
issues, be it local like over-mining or global
responding to brands that pay attention to
our environment, mainly as environmental
initiatives by businesses that now plays a
Green marketing which is also referred to as
sustainable marketing, is one among the
many integral part of a holistic approach to
marketing. Adopting a holistic marketing
philosophy, it manufactures, markets and
disposes goods and services that are less
detrimental to our environment, with
enhancement in information about the
effects that global warming, solid non-
biodegradable waste, toxins, and so forth
have (Tiwari et al., 2011). Business
companies are also accused of creating
goods and packaging, as well as of utilizing
production methods that affect the
environment. Green marketing shows that
business organizations are striving to ensure
that they carry out their operations in such a
way that the harm done to our environment
is kept at a minimum.
Since its inception, green marketing has
been widely researched by scholars.
Studying key areas like marketing strategies,
advertisement, promotion, consumer
behavior, and so forth, with the research
paper count crossing 100 in 2004, and
peaking at 321 in 2019. Sustainable business
growth can produce benefits to consumers,
stockholders and our environment.
Sustainability is considered to be a stool
made of three legs; Planet, Profit and People
(Singh, 2013). In regards to that, ecological
disbalance poses a rising concern to the
people, making them conscious about their
purchasing habits.
Needless to say, consumer behavior plays a
huge role in making profit. In this paper,
therefore, we carry out a systematic review
of literature aiming to answer the research
question: what methods and research topics
crucial role as being a part of their CSR
conduct (Bailey et al., 2016).
are important for the influence of green
marketing on consumer buying behavior?
Henceforth this article is structured to have
four stages; first we find the specifics of the
methodology for the systematic review
along with its; then we find some
methodological ways to approach for the
literature has been found; after that we
describe 5 key topics to research on,
summarize first, and evaluate their strengths
and weaknesses. In the end we finish the
review by describing the shortcomings of
the analysis followed by presenting
recommendations for potential studies.
2. Systematic literature review
Introduction
A systematic review is a rigorous and
systematic method of combining and
synthesizing research to create a body of
empirical knowledge through which
decisions could be made - It is basically a
process of doing in-depth analysis of the
existing literature available in journals. The
first step includes framing of well-defined
research questions which are based on our
topic. The systematic literature review
method has been presented in accordance to
the general guidelines and has been
segregated into subsequent subsections-
Scope of the review- The extent of this
literature review, Identification of relevant
literature- A detailed procedure of
identifying
350 321
303
300 278
250 236
210
200
150 141
100 69
50 36
1 2 1 1 1 1 10
0
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040
pertinent literature; and concluding it with
the systematic literature review results
(Figure 1). This section will provide an
overview of the entire process which the
authors followed to put together this
systematic literature review paper. It will
give a thorough understanding of our
research topic and how the final results for
our review were arrived at. All the steps
have been covered which include what were
our keywords are and what relevance they
hold towards the topic along with the
reasons, how the searches were made and
which databases were chosen it. We ended
this section by briefly explaining what
results were obtained, how relevant they
were and the probable reason for the same.
2.1 Scope of the review
To understand consumer behavior better in
regards to Green marketing, this systematic
literature review was conducted. The
Systematic Literature Review guidelines by
Kichel (2008) were kept as our guidelines in
order to develop our protocol. This protocol
was used in addressing the different research
objectives as proposed in the study. It
describes the question, research strategy for
searching for relevant studies, selected
studies analysis, as well as data analysis.
The scope of the literature review was
majorly based on secondary data. The
review focused on various systematic
literature reviews, articles, journals along
Figure 1. Number papers, English, on Green
Marketing at Scopus database as of October
20, 2021.
other reliable and pertinent text sources from
various academically relevant databases.
Book chapters as well as non-academic
articles, like editorials, interviews, magazine
articles, own or other individual’s
viewpoints were ignored as these sources
haven’t been found to be very authentic or
coherent. In regard to content, the focus of
this review is on consumer’s behavior when
it comes to green marketing. The research
was started out with collection of data from
research articles after which they were
segregated under various subsets according
to our research. Only English articles were
included in the research as the authors have
a better understanding of English as a
language than other languages. The search
was not done in regard to any particular
industry or organization, but rather it was
conducted generally on how Green
marketing affects consumer behavior.
2.2 Identification of relevant literature
Literature identification procedure and
review was conducted by all the authors in
October 2020 during the period of 2 weeks.
Numerous combinations of keywords related
to our topic “Effects of Green Marketing on
Consumer Behavior” - ‘green marketing’,
‘consumer behavior’, ‘consumer
perception’, ‘ecological’, ‘environment’ and
‘sustainability’ were searched in 7
databases: Scopus, EBSCO, Emerald, Sage
Journals, Google Scholar, Science Direct,
and Research Gate. These databases were
chosen because of relevant and quality
academic content available on them and due
to their pertinence for business and
management related research.
For the first attempt at search, all the authors
searched on 7 different databases and that
yielded 3956 results. This search was further
specified for the field of ‘Business
Management’, ‘articles’, geographic
location as ‘India’ and using the above
were divided equally among all the five
authors who read the abstracts of 39 articles
each and categorized each article under one
base topic directly related to Green
Marketing. The five topics decided under
green marketing were - Consumer
perception/behavior, Impacts, Effectiveness
and challenges, Strategies, and Importance
and potential. This was done to substantiate
the relevancy of all the research material to
the extent of research. 133 articles were
rejected for irrelevance to the initially
predefined content and for being non-
academic or immaterial. This final result of
screened articles came out to be a total of 63
articles.
These articles were then extracted and
equally divided among all the authors who
went through whole texts of the articles and
examined them thoroughly for a final
admittance to the systematic literature
review in regard to the predetermined
criteria and topic.
In particular, the articles which were
excluded from the research were basically
based on the topics which were very
irrelevant to green marketing and consumer
behavior and that superficially explored our
topic. A detailed database protocol has been
prepared for a clearer picture (Table 1). The
mentioned 6 keywords – This gave us a total
of 318 searches. Some research papers
which gave a foreign view about the topic
were also considered because of in-depth
and conclusive research. Important
information including the article’s title, year
of publication, author(s), document type,
database name was extracted from these
research papers. From these 318, the number
of duplicates eliminated were 122, resulting
in a final grand total of 196 articles. These
process of the systematic literature review
has been illustrated in Figure 2.
2.3 SLR Results
The final collection of selected articles for
the review process resulted in a total of 63
articles which were referred to as the base
database for the study out of which 41 have
been cited. It was noted that most of these
articles that were selected for our study were
published after 2010, roughly between the
years 2011 and 2019 with a sturdy and
consistent trend (Figure 3).
Figure 2. Flow diagram of SLR
Papers retrieved through
database search (n=318)
Removal of redundant
documents (n=122)
Shortlisting after reading
abstracts (n=196)
Irrelevant records
removed (n=133)
Papers actually included
in the review(n=63)

It was noticed that this accelerating growth
might reflect a trend of increased research
on green marketing (Figure 1). This might
be due to the reason that green marketing is
the burning topic of the hour which
everyone should be aware about as this
Table 1. Database search protocol
concept is the one which would help the
future generations for their survival within
the surroundings. Even though it is a
comparatively new notion, with the
increasing trend of the publications on this
crucial topic, it can be concluded that
researchers have shown interest towards it
and its components related to sustainability
and consumer behavior.
3. Methodological review
To get an idea of the various methods used
in the study of effects of consumer green

Date searched
Data base Criteria for shortlisting Paper count
on
Search: Article title, Abstract Keywords
Scopus Document Type: Article and Review 20/10/2020 21
Article
Search: Keywords, Abstract or Author-
supplied Abstract, Scholarly (peer-
EBSCO reviewed) Journals Publication Type: 20/10/2020 10
Academic Journal Document Type:
Article
Emerald Search: Journals articles, Abstract 20/10/2020 6
Sage Journals Search: Keywords, Abstract 20/10/2020 13
Google Scholar Search: Keywords 20/10/2020 3
Search: All journals, Keywords, and
Science Direct Titles, Document type: Article and 20/10/2020 3
Review article
Research Gate Search: Keywords 20/10/2020 7
Total 63
marketing on consumer behavior, and in-
depth methodological review was done,
ignoring the thorough description of the
literature review and the research design.
The main focus in the methodological
review was on the abstract and excerpts
which described the applied method of each
article. Working together, 2 of our authors
along with consultation with other members
of the team segmented all the articles’
methodologies into the following groups
(a)non-empirical research, mainly consisting
of theoretical and conceptual papers; (b)
quantitative research, mainly consisting of
surveys and analyzing of data; (c) qualitative
research, mainly consisting of cases and
interviews; (d) mixed research, a
combination of both quantitative and
qualitative approach.
While focusing on the different themes,
method of analysis and research questions in
the research papers, we were able to
segment our research papers into the above-
mentioned categories. Most of our research
papers (n=20), about 48.78% of the total had
a non-empirical approach, followed by the
quantitative approach in 39.02% of paper
(n=16), while the mixed method is 7.32%
(n=3) and only 4.88% of total research paper
(n=2) has qualitative approach (Table 2).
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0 The aim of the investigation is covered by 5
19992001200320052007200920112013 201520172019
Figure 3. Articles Published from 2010 to
2019
Table 2. Research methodologies used in the
reviewed literature
Number of Percentage
papers (%)
Non-empirical 20 48.78
Quantitative 16 39.02
Qualitative 2 4.88
Mixed 3 7.32
Total 41 100.00
Most of our research papers use the non-
empirical and quantitative approach in the
literature review of the effects of green
marketing on consumer behavior which
explain that our research topic is still
relatively new. The dominance of non-
empirical review explains that new
researches mainly focus on understanding
the concept and theory behind a particular
topic.
The other dominant research methodology,
i.e. quantitative approach gives us an idea
that businesses in this sector being target
focused, and therefore research papers also
focus on getting definitive results regarding
the various factors and variables that affect
the employee behavior while choosing green
products. Lack of research papers having
qualitative or mixed approach refers that the
research in this sector still lacks open-ended
question and cases which give us better
insights of green purchasing behavior
(Verma, 2016).
4. Thematic Review Intro
authors. All the authors combined have
referred 41 research paper.
The main subject of the research is the Strategy 9
effectiveness and strategies with 17 research Importance and potential 8
papers, then comes the Consumer Behavior Total 56
with 12 research papers, Impacts with 10
research papers, Strategy with 9 research Table 3. Cited Paper Count
papers, Importance and potential with 8
papers (Table 3). Also, 15 of the research
papers were common and were reviewed by 2014) and cost factor related to waste
all the 5 authors. disposal or reductions in material usage are
forcing business organizations to change
Every research paper includes the
their behavior (U. Khandelwal et al., 2019).
Organization evolution, Consumer
awareness, Environment safety. All the 4.1.1 Opportunity
scholars have almost a similar view about
The curtain raiser to the fight against
the subject and they put out their knowledge
environmental degradation is Kyoto
on what practices are required to be done by
Protocol of 1997. The summit had initiated
the companies.
an assigned target to the developed countries
4.1 Importance and potential till year 2012. This initiative has prompted
and motivated many business organizations
Reasons to cite include, Organizations have
in India and all types of consumers, whether
a perception that green marketing is going to
industrial or personal are becoming
become a huge opportunity which can be
concerned regarding the environment. In a
beneficial for the organization in years to
1992 study of sixteen countries reveal that,
come (Shearer, 1990; Keller, 1987).
more than 60% of people in the world,
Organizations feel that they need to be more
indicated they were concerned about the
morally obligated and socially responsible
environment. These figures are evidence that
towards the society and the world (Freeman
businesses who are marketing goods with
and Liedtka, 1991; Davis, 1992;). The
environmental features will have an edge
Government institutions are forcing
over businesses who are marketing non
businesses to make them more responsible
ecofriendly products (P. K. Khandelwal,
(A. Maheshwari & Malhotra, 2011).
2003).
Environmental actions and activity of
competitors force many business Example: McDonald’s replaced their iconic
organizations to change their green clamshell packing with an ecofriendly
marketing activities (S. P. Maheshwari, message driven by waxed paper due to
escalating consumer concern and
McDonalds honoring consumer concern by
No. of shifting to green marketing strategy.
Topics Covered Research 4.1.2 Social Responsibility
paper
Consumer behavior 12 Acknowledging the risk of many businesses
Impacts 10 are beginning to realize that they are
Effectiveness and members of the community and they must
17
Challenges
behave in an environmentally responsible
manner. Business organizations believe that
they need to achieve these environmental
goals and generate profit through displaying
their commitment to these socially driven
objectives. This leads to environmental
issues being introduced and merged with the
organizational culture.
Firms in this situation can take two views,
they can take advantage of environment,
portraying themselves as environmentally
accountable as a marketing instrument or
else they start to become an active voice and
start becoming truly responsible without
promoting this fact.
4.1.3 Governmental Coercion
India has set its targets realistically with an
aim towards future development regarding
all marketing activities, the government’s
aim is to “safeguard” consumers and
society; this safeguarding has significant
green marketing implications.
Government rules relating to green
marketing are made to protect consumers in
many ways, by reducing production of
environmentally harmful products; by
modifying individual and industrial
consumption of environmentally deleterious
products; or by making sure that all kinds of
consumers have the ability to assess the
environmentally friendly products (S.
Punithadevi, 2012).
4.1.4 Competitive Coercion
In competitive coercion; business
organizations use environmental marketing
in order to continue their desired
competitive standing. Business
organizations in majority cases have
observed that competitors encouraging their
environmental behavior and attempt to
mirror this behavioral strategy. In some
cases, it has been observed that this threat
has led the whole industry to alter and
reduce its inimical behavior regarding
environment.
4.1.5 Cost Trimming
Business organizations need to utilize green
marketing in order to address profit related
issues. Disposal of harmful wastes to
environment, which have begun to become
extremely costly and difficult in some cases.
Consequently, businesses who can reduce
harmful wastes now sustain substantial cost
savings. In order to reduce waste, businesses
are now forced to re look and inspect its
production processes. In cases like these
development of useful production methods
will not only reduce waste, but also lead to
reduction of few raw materials. Now
something like this leads to dual cost saving,
since both scrap and raw material are
brought down in a cost-efficient manner.
4.1.6 Conclusion
Green marketing uses an approach to protect
the environment using green marketing
techniques and processes in order to perform
all business functions such as- green
production using eco-friendly raw materials,
methods and green packaging, etc. This way
of approach to marketing allows a business
to act in a responsible manner and which in
turn also lead to gaining competitive edge as
well (Singh, 2013).
4.1.7 Potential
Green marketing has become a wide-spread
phenomenon in the recent times. The share
of sales of the products which are
environment friendly has increased each
year. Green marketing, organic products and
businesses all have become popular. The
winds of the American continent regarding
green products have now spread into India
(Shrikanth & Raju, 2012).
The businesses in India now focus on saving
energy and reducing the electricity costs.
Natural replacement of artificial light made
possible through architectural solutions have
become popular across India. Alternative
sources of energy such as solar energy try to
preserve the sustainability in houses have
become popular (Jansson et al., 2010). The
green marketing industry is also victim of
natural disasters. Hybrid cars have become a
huge boom, hybrid and electric cars have
already started to rule the motor shows
across many countries especially India
which targets to replace 100% conventional
cars with electric vehicles by 2030 (P. K.
Khandelwal, 2003).
Environment friendly gift wrapping has
become extremely popular in the Indian
market. The latest trend is to use old ruled
paper and even old comic books instead of
wrapping paper.
The idea of green marketing is to search for
inspiration for the future. The primary role
will be played by companies who’ll be able
to communicate their intent to the final
consumers intelligibly. Predicting is also
important facet of business organizations
that focus on sustainability. However, these
business organizations must carefully deal
with environmental and economic objectives
and keep their goals in balance (Tiwari et
al., 2011).
4.2 Consumer Behavior
The focus of most of our research papers, 28
out of 62, was on consumer behavior and
perception on green marketing. Since our
aim was to understand the consumer
behavior of India, the majority of our
research papers were based in India and few
research papers from other countries were
considered for a better understanding of
concepts. Many research papers focus on the
various factors affecting consumer behavior
in green marketing, namely environmental
attitude, interpersonal influence, PCE
(Perceived consumer effectiveness) and
altruism (Uddin & Khan, 2017).
Researchers have noticed that when
consumers are aware of environmental
issues, there is a change in the purchase
intentions (Khandelwal, 2019) and
consumers consider the choice of green
products (Sethi, 2015). Environmental
concern refers to how a consumer concern
towards the various environmental issues
(Nittala, 2015; Tandon & Dutta, 2018). It
also covers the awareness level of the
consumer in regards to the various issues
our planet is facing today and what needs to
be done to reduce these issues. A lot of
businesses today consider this factor before
developing their product as due to climate
change, air pollution and ozone depletion,
environmental concern has taken center
stage (Gandhi & Sheorey, 2019).
Environmental concern and awareness lead
to a change in environmental attitude, one’s
attitude towards the environment and its
changes (Taufique & Vaithianathan, 2018).
It is one of the main factors governing
consumer intentions (Kautish & Sharma,
2019) and attitude towards purchasing green
products (Chen & Tung, 2014). Researches
explored how environmental attitude link
with the change in behavior of a person in
terms of going for low emission vehicles
and purchasing green products even if it
costs more (Thapa & Verma, 2014). Even
though these kinds of behavioral changes
cause inconvenience to the consumer along
with being costlier, the consumer still tends
to go for it for the greater good and
sustainability of the planet (Trivedi et al.,
2018).
Altruism refers to the selfless concern of
humans for the greater good of society and
people having more altruistic behavior are
found to have a positive attitude towards the
environment (Taufique & Vaithianathan,
2018). The environmental attitude of
consumers is the major factor driving the
altruistic values of humans towards
choosing green products. Youth today in
India show this altruistic attitude which has
led to an increase in the consumption of
green products (Yadav & Pathak, 2016).
Interpersonal influence is a social influence
wherein a group member influences,
convinces and persuades the others. In India,
youth today influences their friends’ groups,
family and society are going for greener
products that have less effect on the
environment (Uddin & Khan, 2017).
Environmental concern does not always
translate into the buying behavior of the
consumer. Even though a lot of consumers
find environment protection important, that
doesn’t always translate to their change in
buying behavior due to inconvenience or
simply because the green products are
costlier (Uddin & Khan, 2017). Businesses
today therefore focus on the Perceived
consumer effectiveness (PCE) which fills
the gap between the environmental concern
and the purchase behavior of the consumers
(Trivedi et al., 2018).
In summary, the present generation’s
environmental awareness and concern along
with their altruistic values should be
understood to influence them for going for
more green products. But the main issue
arises while implementing marketing
strategies to influence this behavior.
Marketers need to focus on the barriers and
drivers of purchasing behavior and come up
with marketing strategies that can translate
the environmental concern to green
purchasing behavior.
4.3 Strategies
Consequent to the literature review, 11
papers studied role of strategies used by the
companies to influence consumer
purchasing behavior. Successful sales of a
product revolve around the correct use of
marketing strategies, same is the case for
green marketing of products. Now that
Consumers are aware of the ecological
disbalance there is a developing niche in the
market. New green marketing strategies are
being used by to adapt to the environmental
situations (Sharma & Singh, 2015) and the
holistic marketing paradigm promotes the
idea that companies must create goods and
marketing strategies that meet the needs of
customers as well as protect their long-term
interests (Tiwari et al., 2011). Green
marketers will then be able to tap into the
degree to which green advertising is
receptive to members of their target group
and therefore create ads to directly cater to
those consumers open to them.
Segmentation and targeting scales are used
as consumers are expected to react variably
to green marketers depending upon the
levels of openness to green communication,
especially through means of green ads
(Bailey et al., 2016). Furthermore, the secret
to effective green marketing, in addition, is
credibility. Never overstate or build
unreasonable assumptions about 4.4 Impacts
environmental statements and communicate
All the studies done on impacts shows that
clearly and through media that people trust.
green marketing have really changed how
The aforementioned media, for several
people think about saving our environment.
forms of green brands, especially ads, has a
Branding of green products have been really
critical part to sustain managements
successful because of their good image in
relationship with the consumer. All Internet
front of the consumers. There are cases that
equipment outlets create some successful
green marketing has shown the Indian
forum for green buyers to outstretch
consumers about the benefits of eco-
(Ramesh & Samudhra Rajkumar, 2019). For
products but the factor which is missing is
a Green brand, from a consumer point of
the trust and if this factor is achieved, the
view, companies focus on is the designing
purchasing intensity will increase
and packaging of the product. Carbon
significantly. The significant increase in the
Footprinting and Eco-labelling (Sarkar,
purchasing power has been seen because
2012) are used to attract ecologically
Indian consumers believe in protecting the
conscious consumers to explore the brand.
environment (Ansar, 2013; Gupta & Nagpal,
For a developing niche market challenges 2020).
are preexisting in the form non-green, cheap
Studies reveals that the Indian consumers
and popular brands. Thus, innovative green
are worried about the environment and its
marketing strategies are paramount for the
growing concern which have made Indian
sustainability of the brand. Innovation for
Female consumers, in particular, spend extra
sustainability carries exciting opportunities
on green products because of their long-
for companies to expand their top-of-the-
lasting benefits and less harmful effects.
line revenues and even build and change
Improving and Recasting the green products
business models. To stay competitive while
in such a way which reduces its cost and can
also meeting the demands of sustainable
help business in improving its productivity
growth, forward-looking companies would
in such large markets. Awareness of the
need to merge creativity and ecology
surrounding, successful ads and affordable
through the power of eco-innovation (Singh,
products are some factors that attracts
2013).
females’ buyers to buy the product (Sethi,
To summarize the theme, research shows 2015; Jain & Kaur, 2006).
that green marketing focuses on advertising
Even the government have acknowledged
and goods promotion with sustainable
the importance of Green marketing in the
characteristics, and also on all practices of
sales of green products. Development
creating, manufacturing, and promotion of
department have started developing these
environment friendly goods. Building a
green products due to the safety and
brand image that a consumer can trust
necessity of environment protection. Many
through means of advertisement, labeling
surveys have been conducted and it has been
and social media is vital. Reduce, Reuse and
found that environment safety and products
Recycle are the underlying philosophies of
benefits are motivating the consumers to buy
green marketing (Chauhan, 2012).
green products. However, unawareness and
less availability of green products are some
demotivating factors for the consumers
(Shamsi & Siddiqui, 2017; Mishal et al.,
2017).
Even the Organizations are on their toes to
safeguard the environment and have started
developing products that does not harm the
environment. They have started using the 3
R’s strategy to promote these green
products. The studies also show that even
education is one of the factors that impacts
consumer’s behavior and their awareness.
Due to the consumer’s awareness, the
companies have changed their plans and
adopted the production of green products, as
they know that evolution is required to
survive the current market trends and for
this, they are making use of advertisements,
so that the consumers can know about their
products. (Laheri et al., 2014; Shrikanth &
Raju, 2012).
Factors like ozone layer depletion, change in
climate, deforestation and depletion of
natural habitat has made the consumers
concerned about the environment and this
has really changed the consumers behavior
in purchasing the green products.
Consumers are looking for the organization
which are more eco-friendly and this have
made organizations to think more about their
products and becoming a more eco- friendly
(Singh, 2013; Sethi, 2015).
India being a developing country, where
hunger, poverty and social discrimination
are serious concerns, in addition to these,
unsafe environment is a major setback for
this country. To change these, the
organizations needs to produce the eco-
products which doesn’t harm our
environment and fulfil the necessity of
buyers (Das, 2002; Laheri et al., 2014).
4.5 Effectiveness and Challenges
From the reviewed 63 papers, 19 articles
examined the effectiveness and challenges
of Green marketing.
Green/environmental/sustainable marketing
is a relatively fresh marketing concept which
not only concentrates upon, alters and
amplifies the prevailing marketing concept
and implementation but, it also challenges
the regular marketing concept and provides
a more substantial perspective (S.
Punithadevi, 2012). It was also noted that
the Customers want to make more
sustainable choices to support their
environmental (Kapoor & Singh, 2019;
Singh, 2013) and this has surged the demand
for Green Products (Chopra, 2016) - These
green consumers do not mind paying a bit
extra for sustainable products with a higher
quality (Chockalingam & Isreal, 2017). The
effectiveness of green marketing varies with
consumers as some consumers may be more
responsive than others (Bailey et al., 2016).
In a developing country like India, business
firms have started opting for ‘corporate
environmentalism’ because it’s the need of
the hour and also due to the pressure from
the government (Jain & Kaur, 2004; Laheri
et al., 2014). Corporate houses/Companies
are trying to make conscious efforts to go
green - as this would have a favorable effect
and would lessen the negative effect on our
planet, society and its residents (Sarkar,
2012). Green consumerism has steered
corporate environmentalism and companies
have become more environment conscious
and have paid attention towards a greener
marketing orientation (Bahadur &
Manjunath, 2019). and corporates are
targeting for long term profitability and
sustainability. Few of the top green brands
as identified in India in 2011 were noted to
be Dabur India Ltd., Amul, Hindustan
Unilever Ltd., Taj Hotels, Britannia
Industries Ltd. and Infosys Ltd. (Shrikanth
& Raju, 2012).
Greendex Study in 2014 had ranked India
first among 18 countries for sustainable
consumer behavior for 2012 and 2014. but
despite this sustainability propaganda, the
sales of green products haven’t reached the
high that they should have- Consumers have
awareness about the benefits of green
products, but the authenticity of these
organic products are often doubted and
hence, an attitude-behavior gap can be noted
(Gandhi & Sheorey, 2019). The information
regarding sustainability of the product must
be requisite, reliable, and should not give
wrong unsubstantiated claims (Sharma &
Singh, 2015). Price is another barrier as
these products are priced higher and some
consumers are unwilling to pay premium.
Consumers are sensitive about their
surroundings and its environment and are
consciously driven to perform green
behavior but the quality and prices of these
green products sometimes act as barriers.
Low availability along with misleading
advertisements-labelling/certifications often
confuse the consumers and hence, these
consumers end up buying the traditional
products (Kapoor & Singh, 2019). Since
Green marketing is a new concept, still there
are significant barriers towards the
amalgamation of more sustainable
consumption style (Bhatia & Jain, 2013).
While the shift from normal to green
marketing appears expensive in the short run
- with low profits initially as green
technologies are more costly; it proves to be
beneficial (financially too) in the prolonged
run (Kiradoo, 2019; Mohammadi & Reed,
2020). Another challenge for Green
marketing is Green Myopia - Misjudging
ecological quality and consumer satisfaction
or concentrating more on the quality at the
expense of satisfaction is called green
marketing myopia (Bahadur & Manjunath,
2019; Choudhary & Gokarn, 2013) and a
need for standardization of the Green
products (Sharma & Singh, 2015).
To summarize, the body of research on
effectiveness and challenges of Green
marketing seems adequate in regard to both
methodologically and from the thematic
point of view. The strengthening advantage
of this topic was that the research on the
new concept was really thorough and the
idea of Green marketing and its challenges
were very clearly explained. The
investigation had all the aspects of green
marketing covered. The effectiveness of
green marketing wasn’t covered very
properly- sufficient qualitative data wasn’t
available to prove it and this can be counted
as a weakness of this review.
5. Limitations
Major limitation for the study was the
geographical location. As green marketing is
a new term in the developing countries, the
development and production of such
products is really hard to start. Studies only
focuses on the consumer behavior on the
green product and not on a particular green
product. Only few factors are studied to
show the buying behavior.
In comparison to the population only a small
sample was taken was small. Marketing of
green products is done more for the urban
consumer and rural consumer are generally
ignored in the studies. Changes in the
company leads to more expense which is
generally ignored by the profit building
organizations. To advertise the product as
“Green”, a certification is required from the
government which takes a very long
procedure. It is very difficult keep up with
the technological innovation involving green
products. Organization is always at a risk if
they’re changing their products green and
many mistakes can be made which be
threatening to the organization. Another
limitation of our research was the lack of
papers following qualitative approach,
which would give us better insight of
consumer's green purchasing behavior.
6. Future Scope for Research
Most of the research papers we found in our
study focused on quantitative technique and
analysis of green segmentation. Therefore,
our future research would focus more on
qualitative or mixed-method which focuses
on more open-ended question giving us a
better insight into consumer behavior with
regards to green products (Verma, 2016).
We also found that this segment is well
researched with a lot of non-empirical and
quantitative approach but these studies are
mainly generic. More focus on product and
industry-specific research will help us get
better insights of consumer behavior and
how much consumers ready to pay for these
products especially in the case of countries
like India where environmental issues are
gaining more attention due to the high air
pollution levels in major cities (Narula &
Desore, 2016).
Many of the past studies only focus on the
psychological behavior of consumers while
completely ignoring the effects of education,
governmental policies and other external
environmental changes. Therefore, future
research should focus more on these external
factors and their effects on changing
consumer behavior (Zhang & Dong, 2020).
MNC’s can use their product to know about
the consumers view about their product.
They can get to know the view of consumer
on green products and non-green products.
In order to speculate consumer behavior
better, observed data can be used which
involves information of different
geographical regions. Only limited factors
have been explained in the previous studies
but if more factors are investigated, it can
provide more precise and relevant data.
Promotion of the products can be done with
help of social media marketing using the
help of apps such as Facebook, Instagram,
Telegram and many other. Further,
consumer can get to know more about the
green products, its importance, benefits and
also that these products don’t harm the
environment. When the technology
improves, the cost of the products is going
to get lower and lower which can improve
the sale growth of the product and likewise
can help in the safety of the environment. In
future, instead of taking survey from a
particular sample, a huge sample can be
taken and used to conduct survey to get
more view about the consumer on green
products. Consumers are becoming more
concerned about the environment day by
day, due to the ozone layer depletion,
pollution which has made consumer think
about their buying behavior. Green
Marketing strategies can help organizations
and the government to increase awareness
among the consumers and get help in the
safety of the environment and its resources.
7. Conclusion
A systematic literature review on a new and
extremely expanding area is a taxing task.
Although limited in extent, this paper gives
important insights on the effects of green
marketing on consumer behavior. A
systematic review methodology was used
through which we identified 63 articles and
these were further categorized under five
themes: Consumer perception behavior,
Impacts. Effectiveness and challenges,
Strategies, and Importance and potential.
In terms of the methodologies used, it was
found that more quantitative and
experimental studies were required for our
review to be better. In addition to that, given
the still emerging concept of green
marketing and consumer behavior related to
it, a new research paradigm is needed that
involves newer methodologies that are
multifaceted and time sensitive as it topic is
a rapidly emerging concept. In conclusion, it
can be predicted that the accelerating pace
of research on Green marketing and its
various facets will continue with their
expansion and this will keep increasing the
literature related to these topics along with
the actual practice of this theme within the
organizations.
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