Crowdfunding ur ett grönt perspektiv : En explorativ studie av grön marknadsföring inom svensk crowdfunding

Sammanfattning: Today, more companies and consumers engage in environmental issues, which has increased the importance of sustainable entrepreneurship and the demand for sustainable alternatives. Companies that offer sustainable products and exploit green marketing are thus considered in many markets to experience higher profitability, competitiveness and consumer benefits. Despite the importance of sustainable business initiatives, one of the biggest challenges for newly established green companies is to raise capital. Parallel to this, there is a growing interest in crowdfunding as an alternative for sustainability-oriented initiatives, where the collection of capital takes place through private financiers. However, to succeed in an environmentally-oriented crowdfunding campaign, it requires that the company has knowledge of its market, and an insight into how green arguments should be presented to consumers and investors. Research surrounding the connection between sustainability and crowdfunding is currently limited, whereupon this exploratory study aims to investigate how companies communicate green arguments in the realm of Swedish crowdfunding. To answer this purpose, the paper includes a survey of green marketing as a phenomenon, as well as the way in which green communication can take place. The aim is thus to find out how companies through crowdfunding use different messages and green marketing strategies to communicate their responsibility. In the study an abductive research design has been applied, where empirical evidence has been collected through two qualitative methods; content analysis and semi-structured interviews. By studying the communicative content of crowdfunding campaigns, and interviewing three respondents involved in the business communication strategy, a deeper understanding of the practical work of green marketing in crowdfunding was intended. The results show that the companies surveyed have a strong desire to work sustainably and that they regard the environmental aspect as a naturally integrated part of the business. However, they do not see a direct link between sustainability, green marketing and crowdfunding. Through their crowdfunding campaigns the companies raise several green marketing efforts, but the communication of green messages are generally quite modest. In order to reach financiers, their interests are prioritized first, which often means both financial and emotional incentives. Therefore, green messages are not seen as the main selling argument, but something that can create added value.