Is doing good ever good enough? : A study of Swedish consumers’ perception and attitude towards companies using green marketing

Sammanfattning: Abstract  Bachelor´s thesis, Enterprising and Business Development, Linnaeus University School of Business and Economics, 2EB01E, VT 2017  Authors: Malin Borg and Emma Hattenhauer Tutor: Dan Halvarsson  Title: ”Is doing good ever good enough?” - a study of Swedish consumers’ perception and attitude towards companies using green marketing. Background: More now than ever are people interested in how they themselves affect the environment and how the companies work green. By implementing a “green marketing” strategy, companies use their environmental work as a marketing tool with different agendas. Some authors claim that this strategy is used in order to find new markets and new consumers while some say that it is a way for companies to encourage further green work to their market shares. Not all green work is however shown to the public, in some cases it is done in the dark in order to lower the external pressure of possible scrutiny, a strategy also called lean or muted greening. Theory explains that in contrast to this muted strategy consumers perceive transparency within a company and its green work highly important, as well as how a green marketing campaign is presented with words and terminology. It is of great important to consider what the consumers demand from a company in order for them to fully succeed with their green marketing campaign and build trust between the company and the consumer.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to create understanding of Swedish consumers’ perception and attitude towards companies that are using a green marketing strategy. Method: This study uses a deductive approach with a qualitative nature, where words and explanations are of interest and is carried out through eight individual semi-structured interviews with respondents all living in Sweden found through a convenience sampling method. With a used hermeneutic approach the respondents subjective opinions has lead the research in the direction it has taken and further pre-understandings has been created. Conclusion: Through this study it has been found that the main-key to a successful green marketing campaign among Swedish consumers is trust. Without trust towards a company Swedish consumers explain themselves as not believing in green marketing done by a company. Social media is a communication channel that, among Swedish consumers is not perceived credible and should therefore not be used when doing a green marketing campaign. The concept of lean or muted greening is something that 6/8 respondents considered positive while 2/8 felt the opposite, however all considered transparency as a highly important factor in order to not miss trust a company and believing that, if something is hard to find maybe it is not done as presented. Language and terminology are two closely related and much important aspects that need to be clear and easily understood, however not excluding important aspects but rather give further explanations about concepts that might be considered complicated.