Coming to Vancouver from a foreign country, one significant difference that stood out to me in terms brand marketing is the emphasis on being ‘green’. There is a continuing trend amongst consumers to become environmentally concious and firms have taken advantage of this. They spent thousands and millions of dollars on research to make their products more ‘eco-friendly’ and spent thousands and millions more to market this to consumers. Take for example this simple commercial from Apple
Although some of these firms would have been motivated by increased profits, their attempt lessen the impact they made on the environment through offering their goods and services to consumers is applaudable. However, I agree to what Stephanie Myers stated in her blog ‘Consumerism Done Differently Part.2’ posted in the Canadian Marketing Blog, that “despite society’s growing environmental consciousness, our consumer culture persists.” Consumers like comfort, and would want to get an increasing amount of goods and services. Therefore although firms are using less and raw resources to offer a unit of their goods and services, this will only slow the negative impact they have on the environment rather than improve it.
I believe that the smart firm should realize that sooner or later that consumers are smart enough to realize this fact. The current trend of being environmentally concious will become a norm that almost all firm will capitalize on and therefore consumers will take more interest in firms that are not only able to use less and less raw materials to provide their goods and services but also improce the environment. While being green may be the current marketing trend right now, the next step may be to market on how a firm is actually improving the environment. Stephanie Myers in her blogpost have given some examples of firms that have started to this.
http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/