Dear friends and colleagues, I hope the summer finds you well and enjoying time with friends and family. It continues to be an exciting time for green marketers, though, and the summer can’t afford any of us a complete break from the important business of selling green! In this issue of EcoMarketer, to help you relax, I want to share some important new intelligence and good news.
New Green Market Research Supports Continued Growth
As green marketers, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep you up at night: The fever pitch of interest in the environment can’t sustain itself. Or can it? Is it a lasting trend, or a flash in the pan? Is it just lip service, or does it make a real difference in purchasing decisions? Is the demand real?
And if it is: what are the priority green issues? What issue-product associations are greatest? Does green leadership give me more pricing flexibility? What can I do to ensure my green position builds my market share?
With so many questions (and sleeplessness), you need answers. Great green marketing starts with a savvy understanding of your customers. Understanding starts with research.
Two years ago, we at TerraChoice recognized that our clients selling to ICI (industrial, commercial, institutional) customers needed better information about these buyers. In response, we launched EcoMarketsTM, and this month – again in collaboration with the Responsible Purchasing Network (RPN) and the North American Green Purchasing Initiative (NAGPI) – we have just released the 2008 results.
This year, over $78 billion dollars of purchasing power was represented in the EcoMarkets survey sample! The sample is evenly divided between the United States and Canada and represents all types and sizes. Here are just a few of the interesting and useful things we learned:
- Green purchasing is continuing to increase. More organizations have green purchasing policies in 2008 than did in 2007, and 68 percent of organizations increased their green purchasing in the past 12 months. 91 percent of purchasers expect their organizations to be even more active in green purchasing over the next two years. That should help you sleep – you’re in a hot space that continues to grow.
- Core product attributes – price, function, availability – continue to be more important than environmental considerations. So, although environment is more widely recognized today, savvy green marketers understand they must still compete on core benefits and use green leadership as a point of distinction.
- Among environmental concerns, health-related terms are more resonant than purely environmental terms (such as “air pollution”) and especially more so than those related to wildlife/wilderness concerns. Continue to attach your environmental value proposition to the most universal and intuitive benefits.
And for those in the TerraChoice family, there are two particularly satisfying findings:
- Ninety-one percent of purchasers are concerned about increasing greenwashing in environmental claims, and a majority believe that eco-labelling is a solution to this problem. A large majority of survey respondents (72 percent) believe eco-labels contribute to better purchasing decisions. We know that some part of this recognition is due to our Six Sins of Greenwashing campaign of the last 10 months.
- EcoLogo is now the second most widely recognized eco-label, behind only Energy Star (although Energy Star continues to lead all other brands by a wide margin). In addition, recognition of EcoLogo grew by the widest margin between 2007 and 2008, from 19 percent to 27 percent. Given the hard work we’ve been putting into brand promotion in both the United States and Canada, these are very re-assuring results!
There is a lot to sink your teeth into in the 2008 EcoMarkets Summary report. It’s available free of charge by emailing ecomarkets@terrachoice.com. EcoMarkets also undertakes commissioned and category-specific research each month. Category-specific reports are currently available for flooring, packaging and printing. A survey on cleaning products and services will be released at ISSA in the fall.
In the next issue of EcoMarketer, find out what our perspective is and what our recommendations are relating to the new environmental claims guidelines in Canada and the USA. We will also undertake an overview of U.S. markets development activities.
Thanks for your support, and have a great summer. For more information on any of this, don’t hesitate to drop me a line: smcdougall@terrachoice.com.
