Chapter 4: Marketing and Socio-ecological Balance

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

The early period of 1960s witnessed some major concerns regarding the environment which were raised by several experts and activists from the different corners of world leaving a call upon business decision makers to potentially address these major environmental challenges. During the 1970s and 1980s, people around the world realized about the various environmental threats as more and more experts and government officials continued to raise voice regarding the serious ecological issues. Since the 1990s, the environment's quality has continued to deteriorate despite the increasing efforts to save the planet. Various environmental intricacies have put the whole world on high alerts, such as global warming, climate change, depletion of scarce resources, increasing carbon dioxide levels and other harmful gases emissions. Even the issues such as deforestation, water pollution, nuclear waste, acid rains and ozone layer depletion have also assumed the status of major ecological threats and discussions regarding these are on upsurge. It is realized that routine business activities have damaging effects on the environment which is majorly due to overconsumption of scarce resources, usage of harmful materials, and negligence towards environmental regulations (Saha & Darnton, 2005). Still, the business strategies of many firms do not seem to make a real response. Only a few organizations have initiated and showed a concern for the environment, and developed a ‘green orientation’. With the advent of increasing ecological challenges in recent decades, many pressure groups and organizations around the world have emerged and are working diligently, along with government efforts, to promote and protect the environment in order to make the planet a safer place for present and future generations. This led towards the creation of immense pressure on many national governments to make laws, to push for legislation, to protect and hence preserve the environment. The resultant effect of all these is realized with the encouragement of many organizations to reconsider their business policies and strategies and to align their activities with the international trend of environmental commitment, or green orientation. Specifically, several firms have incorporated high ecological standards into their production and marketing strategies, thus paving the way for a better environmental approach in marketing (see Case study 4.1).