Green Washing and Its Effects on Consumer Perspectives Essay Example for Free

Green Washing and Its make on Consumer Perspectives EssayThe term cat valium backwash denotes the use of false or lead astray development concerning green marketing by companies to compel consumers to buy their products on the perception that the connection is environmentally friendly. It involves the misleading use of green marketing to endorse a false perception that the company products or policies atomic number 18 environmentally friendly. Green washing has been growing in the recent years mainly due to the increase demand for green products. Due to increasing concerns about global warming, consumers atomic number 18 increasingly demanding for economically responsible products (Hart, 1997). Companies that seek to survive have no option exclusively to either provide these products or to manage them. Another reason why green washing is growing is due to the fact that the sales of green oriented products have increased. A study carried out in the United States showed t hat in 2007, 328 products labelled environmentally friendly were launched by major manufacturers. This was a significant increase as in 2002 only 5 products were labelled the same (Bansal Roth, 2000). The rise of green products in the market has forced companies to undertake green washing in order to compete effectively.Another reason why green washing is growing is that the converse of environmental messages is cool off not controlled by any industrial wide standards. Companies are free to administer information about their environmental policies without any restrictions hence they can provide misleading information at will. The final reason why green washing is common is that government action and regulation is still pending. An analysis by HSBC on passed and pending economic stimulus packages of 15 countries reported that over US $3 trillion is intended to stimulate economies for the next ten years (Bazzillier Vauday, 2009).A large circumstances of this money will support e nvironmental objectives. This situation has resulted in the increase of lobbying which in turn has resulted in a situation whereby companies have to hunt tactical opportunities that do not conform to their messages on environmental friendliness. Ways of Carrying out Green Washing There are several techniques of green washing utilize by companies. Although only a few literatures exist on the subject, the basis of identifying these techniques is that proposed by the TerraChoice Environmental Group.The radical did research on the manners with which companies mislead consumers about their environmental friendliness and came up with six ship canal which they dubbed the six sins of green washing. The first sin is the sinof hidden trade off. This involves the attempt by companies to publicize a product as green by using only one environmental place or an intolerable narrow set of attributes disregarding other more important environmental issues. Although the claims are not false, they portray a greener picture of the product which cannot be supported by a all-embracing environmental analysis.The second sin is the sin of no proof. This involves all information disseminated by a company about environmental friendliness but cannot be validated by easily accessible support information. According to a study by Bazillier and Vauday (2009), communication of full CSR activities by companies to customers is impossible. As a result, both types of information communicated to consumers exist, hard and soft information. Hard information is that which can be verified by customers but tends to be costly while soft information is that which is readily available to consumers but cannot be verified.