ECO-MARKETING AND ECO-LABELLING: DOES IT ENSURE ...

D.Grundey 154 ISSN 1648 - 4460
Researching Customer Loyalty In Lithuania
or wants, such that the satisfaction of these needs and wants occurs, with minimal detrimental
impact on the natural environment.
This definition incorporates much of the traditional components of the marketing
definition that is "All activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchanges intended to
satisfy human needs or wants" (Stanton and Futrell, 1987). Therefore, it ensures that the
interests of the organization and all its consumers are protected, as voluntary exchange will
not take place unless both the buyer and seller mutually benefit (Brauers et al, 2007). The
above definition also includes the protection of the natural environment, by attempting to
minimize the detrimental impact this exchange has on the environment. This second point is
important, for human consumption by its very nature is destructive to the natural environment
in a certain territory (Burinskienė and Rudzkienė, 2009) with incurring costs of production
and consumption of ecological products (Toming, 2007; Jucevičienė et al, 2007). (To be
accurate products making green claims should state they are "less environmentally harmful'
rather than "Environmentally Friendly"). Thus green marketing should look at minimizing
environmental harm, not necessarily eliminating it.
The article deals with the issues of environmental (eco-) marketing and ecological
labelling to ensure that consumers have access to ecological products and services and they
might adjust their preferences towards environmentally friendly business practices. The major
issue is whether customer loyalty could be improved towards ecological products through
adequate marketing actions and ecological labelling. For business worldwide, ecological
marketing and its applications in practice have become a competitive prerogative for modem
business performance.
1. Antecedents of Eco-Theory for IVlarketing
/./ Product as a Key Component of the Marketing-Mix
As known, product policy is one of elements of marketing policy. Product decisions
usually initiate the whole sequence of firm's decisions concerning also other components of
marketing-mix, i.e. promotion (communication), price, and place (distribution). These are socalled
4Ps. According to a basic marketing principle, a (new) product must respond to market
needs. So, a buyer is most important. But in modem marketing, product is treated mainly
as an instmment, one of the four, in a company's influence on a buyer in the market. Strictly
speaking, markeUng considers a product very broadly - as a set of such tools as:
(1) product per se containing both a physical good and/or a service,
(2) packaging (if needed), and
(3) labelling, i.e. mainly a trade mark and a brand, where (2) and (3) arc named a
product's equipment.
A marketing manager in a manufacturing firm has a selection of the following potential
directions of product decisions:
• to maintain an existing product in an unchanged form,
. to modernize a product and its equipment,
to launch a new product into the market, and
to withdraw an existing product from the market.
It happens rather seldom and mainly in small firms that a company produces and sells
only one type (line) of a product. Usually there exists a certain production assortment in the
enterprise, called a product-mix. In such a situation, decisions concerning the assortment
structure belong to product decisions, too.
TiL'XNSl-omATlON.'i IN mUNt-XS č'nCONOMia, Vol. 8, No 1 (16), 2009