article originally published on dalecallahan.com under the title “Does it Pay to Be Green?”
A recent post by Small Business Trends hailed that businesses need to do more than claim they are green and environmentally friendly – now they need to show evidence to their customers of just how green. For example, I have seen some small companies participate in this thinking by posting on their website how many carbon credits they had purchased.
But I have to wonder —–
Do we really care? Really?
Here was my response/comment to the post:
Are we sure? I wonder if there is any research to show that customers really care. And do customers on the west coast care more than others?
And how are the challenges to global warming data changing this game?
On my side I find a lot of people who love the “green” stuff – but I also see people turned off by companies who think they are saving the world.
While I am not commenting so much about is global warming true or not (although as a recovering scientist I do have an opinion about the science) — I am just wondering … are we all jumping up and down thinking our customers care without knowing for sure?
For me, green used to mean you had an upset stomach – something I might relate to a rough ride while deep sea fishing. Back in the ’70’s Kermit claimed it is “not easy being green.” How we moved from being hard to be green to it is “good to be green” and now it is “a must to be green” I really am puzzled.
But what I notice is all best intentions in the world – people end up buying value. The idea of being green presupposes customers place a high value on a company spending its money on being green.
I am bettering this is not true. What do you think?
Dale Callahan is a contributing writer for the IEM Blog. Dr. Callahan is the IEM Program Director for the Information Engineering and Management Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His thoughts here represent the types of topics covered in the Entrepreneurial courses he teaches the clients of the IEM Program at UAB. Thanks to DaleCallahan.com for this article.
Hi Dale,
You raise a good point.
I look at it this way: there is some percentage of people, who REALLY care about sustainability and green issues. Green is a major factor in their buying decisions. A statistic I read (and now forget where) said that perhaps 20% of the buying public cares deeply about green. So assuming you could equate that statistic across the board (just for sake of argument), it might be that as much as 20% of your prospect base cares enough for green to be a significant factor in making a purchase decision.
For everyone else, green may be a much lesser consideration. A “nice to have,” if you will, for many.
But — entire businesses have been built on narrower niches than 20%…. So green may be enough to distinguish a business from the competition, if you think of it as a niche.
And don’t forget the psychic satisfaction that business owners get from attempting more responsible sustainability practices…
Appreciate your thoughts…
Anita
Just realized there was a comment here – sorry for the long delay. You points are very accurate – we do see microtrends where people distinguish themselves – and if that is your strategy – great. But so many I see just throwing money at it without thought.