Green marketing(is it ethical to use green marketing just to convince Essay

Green marketing(is it ethical to use green marketing just to convince customers to buy the companies products) - Essay Example The present essay is based on the book ‘Sign Wars: The cluttered landscape of advertising’ by Goldman and Papson (Goldman et al, 1996). It deals with the meaning and practice of green marketing, its concepts as developed by the advertising industry, its effectiveness both to genuinely care for the environmental concerns and to hoodwink the public etc. It deals with the ‘signs’ attached to the products with a view to promote sales, even as companies defend their record of environmental concerns. Relevant case studies are included to argue that green marketing has been more of a self-promotion gimmick than any real concern for responsible corporate behaviour. 1 (a). Goldman and Papson, trace the evolution of advertising industry from 1920s, when the competitive market forces were compelling industries to entice consumers to buy their products. They point out that in order to sell more and more of the products, advertisers â€Å"†¦created a social world in which (a consumer’s) identity is expressed through consuming commodity signs† (Goldman, 1996, p.187). These commodity signs represented a â€Å"†¦social process of branding goods, that is, endowing goods with value and capacity to fulfill a variety of desires† (p.188). In this process, the advertisers used, â€Å"†¦nature as a referent system from which to derive signifiers for constructing signs† (p.191). â€Å"Commodities like cars and cigarettes are placed in the landscape settings labeled ‘natural’ and juxtaposed with natural objects† (p.192). By 1980s, advertising that started with nature as a referent system, progresse d to ‘green marketing’ to position nature itself as the subject of the ad †¦(only) to hail the viewing subject† (p.192). Thus commodities are positioned as environmentally friendly, and corporations 1 (b). Automation and mass production of the last century, led to severe competition. To compete, it was not enough for the