Environmental Friendliness as a Marketing Strategy

People in Sweden have become more aware and interested in environmental issues. This has led to an increased demand for environmental friendly food products. Previously the price often determined if a customer bought the product or not. During the recent years internet has become a more widely used media than ever before. This has led to that inter-net is one of the important tools to gather information and knowledge, among other things environmental issues. With such aspects in mind the authors found it interesting to investigate if companies could use internet as a marketing tool for environmental friendly products. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to: investigate if and how companies display environmental friendliness in their marketing strategy and how it is presented on their company webpage’s. In order to fulfil the purpose five general dealer’s home and webpage’s were examined. As a supplementing research one store for each of the five general dealers were visited and ex-amined. The used theoretical framework is focused on value and green marketing. How to create a specific value is often the core when formulating and creating a strategy for a company. Green marketing is such marketing that include environmental concerns in the marketing offers. The sales of ecological food has increased and according to SCB (2006) represented 6 Billions in revenue between 2004 and 2005. The literature indicates that green marketing have to change and become more like conventional marketing, in order to reach the larger consumer segments. As a supplement to this theory, a section with home and webpage de-sign and chromatics are added. The analysis and conclusion showed that there were some differences in how the re-searched companies used green marketing. Two of the companies used their webpage’s and displayed environmental awareness, while two had a clear focus on price. One company had a health focus. It was also found that there are differences between the messages and information on the home and webpage’s, compared to the findings in the stores. What also was found was that green marketing not only should target the already green consumers, but instead aim at the larger consumer segment. To do this green marketing should become more like conventional marketing and not only focus on the product, but also other value factors. The findings also suggest that the companies could use their home and webpage’s to a higher extent than they do today