Background
The conventional marketing mix concept was gradually developed during the economic miracle right after World War II and included the 4P’s model, introduced around 1960. This model, in which the promotion of products with advertising as one of its main tools plays an important role, was helpful for many industries in many markets.” However, the market situation changed: con-sumers became more aware of the social and ecological implications of their purchases and at the same time inherent attributes like efficiency and cost effectiveness, health and safety, symbolism and status needed to be highlighted by companies in order to remain competitive in the market. The companies have been adapting to the changes and now move towards “relationship marketing focused more on communicating with the consumer” rather than just promoting the product. They use advertising, along with other activities and resources, as a tool to inform the consumers and stakeholders about the sustainability solutions the company provides and about the company as a whole.
“The relationship between marketing and the environment has been examined since the early 1970s”. First, the idea of ecological marketing was developed and mainly centered in the “depletion of energy and non-energy natural resources and the pollution created as by-product of production and consumption.” “The first tentative steps of non-polluting industry and first uses of nature in advertising arose” and were later accompanied by an intensive mediatization of environmental issues in the 1980s. For example: the discovery of the ´hole in the ozone layer` in 1985 and Chernobyl in 1986. By this time, green marketing and environmental marketing concepts were built up and elements from the product life cycle assessment (associated with environmental marketing) as well as destruction of ecosystems and poverty in developing countries (associated with green marketing) were considered in the advertising campaigns.
Lately, the concept of sustainability advertising has evolved as it is defined in the first part of this article. It has encountered critics, and limitations, but also challenges that are guiding the companies, governments and organizations to the implementation of more holistic and sustainable practices in the process of providing products and services worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Sustainability Advertising
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)