This paper proposes a novel environmental marketing approach in which the adoption of greener consumer behaviours is encouraged by repositioning them as normal. The research was undertaken in order to help explain the disappointing performance of green marketing initiatives. The methodology was qualitative, with focus groups and a wide range of stimulus materials. The study illuminates the ways in which consumers conceptualise and adopt pro‐environmental behaviours and highlights the importance of consumer ideas about what is normal. The research indicates that consumers are more likely to adopt behaviour and products that they think are normal and that what is regarded as normal changes over time. New activities and products that are initially seen as different, and as outside normal behaviour, can eventually become mainstream and accepted as normal, in a process of ‘social normalisation’. As part of this process, other behaviours, which have been mainstream everyday ways of doing things, can become marginalised over time. The research suggests that companies and policy makers tend to position green marketing initiatives as targeting a green niche and that this inhibits social normalisation and mainstream adoption. Green marketing can potentially play an important role in the social normalisation of green practices and products by portraying these as normal and everyday instead of emphasizing their greenness. The study contributes to understanding of consumer behaviour and the adoption of more sustainable products and practices and identifies practical ways to improve green initiatives. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The way in which quantitative research and qualitative research are conventionally contrasted with each other runs along familiar lines – the former is seen as offering 'hard', 'factual' data, while the latter is depicted as softer, as providing deeper insight, but at the expense of being necessarily more 'interpretivist' and 'subjective' in its approach. Seldom is it recognised that this way of distinguishing the two methodologies is, in fact, rooted in our quantitatively determined beliefs about human experience. This paper aims to uncover these assumptions and to identify how they are rooted in our underlying preconceptions about the perceptual process itself. It outlines a new platform upon which the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research can be established and which links the latter with semiotics.
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How do brands communicate with consumers? This is a question that runs to the very heart of the marketing process and it has attracted much attention in recent years. In order to understand some of the issues involved we need, however, to identify where our models of brand communication have come from and, in particular, how strongly they are linked to our underlying theories of perception. This should be our starting-point in understanding the process of so-called 'brand communication'. The conceptual landscape in which we believe consumers perceive brands feels so intuitively self-evident that it hardly seems to demand interrogation. We imagine that consumers experience brands in much the same way as they experience everything else in the world around them. They perceive, for example, a physical object such as a table, and light waves from this object are transmitted to, and form perceptions in, their minds. They 'process' these perceptions and then act accordingly by, for instance, walking around the table or placing their coffee on it. There is, in this model, a basic assumption that any act of perception consists of three parts: the object (or event) itself; the waves of light that pass from the object (or event) towards the eye; and the formation of a 'perception' on our retina. When thinking about brand communication, we take this common-sense view of perception and apply it, almost wilfully, to our account of how consumers perceive brands. A brand creates a TV advertising execution, or a piece of packaging, that replaces the table in our basic model. Consumers encounter this marketing activity and it creates perceptions in their minds. These perceptions 'carry', we assume, rational or emotional 'messages', which the consumer then processes at a conscious, or subconscious, level. This framework interprets brand communication as a transmission from a sender (the brand) to a receiver (the consumer) and it is enshrined, in its most exegetical form, in the Shannon Weaver model (Shannon & Weaver 1949). This model of perception seems so very clear to us; the laws of optics, no less, support it. It is, however, a culturally determined way of construing perception and one that has been dominant only in the past 400 years. This is not to say, of course, that it is a model that is factually inaccurate. It is just that it tells only half the story.
The concept of ‘brand essence’ is relatively well established in marketing circles. It has come to the fore as a way for marketers to better understand their brands and also as a benchmark to evaluate brand activities. In some quarters, however, the concept has encountered more resistance. It is seen by many in the creative community as something that oversimplifies the marketing process and limits the power of the brand. The main argument of this paper is that brand essence has been fundamentally misunderstood. This has resulted in a number of negative consequences for the branding process. However, this paper will also show how the concept still has much to offer marketing professionals. A new, and more relevant, interpretation of brand essence is put forward in this paper, which recognises the intrinsically relational and dynamic aspects of the concept. As such, it creates a new platform upon which we can build our understanding of brands.
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