Guest editorial

Citation

Karjaluoto, H. (2009), "Guest editorial", Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jsit.2009.36511daa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Volume 11, Issue 4.

The special issue will focus on green marketing in the business-to-business context with a special emphasis on new media. Although the body of academic literature on green marketing and environmental issues has expanded in recent years, contributions have mainly concentrated on consumer product development (Polonsky and Ottman, 1998; Chen, 2001; Berchicci and Bodewes, 2005), organizational purchasing (Drumwright, 1994; Polonsky et al., 1998) and green marketing strategies (Kärnä et al., 2003; Bloom and Ginsberg, 2004; Lee and Rhee, 2007). A majority of studies have discussed the importance of greenness in consumer marketing and relatively little research has been conducted in business-to-business settings such as industrial marketing (Pujari et al., 2004).

With respect to the use of new media in environmental and green marketing communications, literature has just started to emerge. Despite the growing awareness of the importance of environmental issues in marketing, as yet little is known of how new media such as digital marketing communications conducted via the internet and mobile channels relate to the promotion of the greenness, products and services of a firm. One of the first contributions to green marketing communication strategies (Carlson et al., 1996) argues that in green marketing communications there are four categories or levels; namely, product orientation, process orientation, image orientation and environmental claim. Product orientation refers to the green attributes and credentials of a product. Process orientation focuses on environmentally friendly technologies and production techniques. Image orientation portrays the corporation as an environmentally responsible unit – both as a company and as an organization comprising environmentally conscious individuals. Environmental claim involves environmental responsibility issues in the form of actions and decisions (see also Carlson et al., 1993).

Mustonen and Karjaluoto (2009) have been among the first contributors who have linked this green marketing communications framework or categorization to customer values and loyalty. Their study presents green values as antecedents to perceived value that mediates the impact of green values on customer loyalty via communications channels (see Figure 1). An example of how to utilize the correct communication channels in promoting the right “green” message to customers can be found in the rise of what we could call “environmentally friendly” communications channels such as e-mail newsletters rather than print versions and video-conferencing rather than face-to-face meetings that often require air travel. In addition, communication in this framework also involves the effectiveness of the channel and message. Relatively little is yet known of how the greenness of a product or service actually relates to the ultimate purchasing decision. For example, how important is greenness compared to the final price?

Corporations often lack a uniform green marketing strategy, especially in terms of the integration of their various marketing communications instruments and new media. Green values are often trumpeted in corporate newsletters and in public relations events, but are often non-existent in other instruments such as personal selling. Given the pressure to pursue socially-responsible strategies like green marketing, this topic clearly merits fresh contributions in the form of both conceptual and empirical studies. It also seems likely that business-to-business customers are placing more emphasis on green values during their buying decisions, but as yet, little empirical evidence of the success of green marketing tactics is available.

The idea behind this special issue was to collect a sample of the latest research findings that address the various aspects of green marketing strategies and new media in business-to-business settings. This special issue consists of four papers addressing the topic from both conceptual and empirical standpoints.

The first contribution to the special issue entitled “B2B green marketing & innovation theory for competitive advantage” by Valerie Vaccaro provides a review of the latest research on green marketing strategies, innovation and competitive advantage. Vaccaro argues that in business-to-business marketing organizations can utilize reactive and proactive green marketing strategies. The paper finds that the characteristics of the diffusion of innovation theory are related to proactive green marketing strategies. Vaccaro proposes that the diffusion theory is a suitable framework for studying B2B green marketing strategies.

The second contribution entitled “Managing greenness in technology marketing” authored by Henri Simula, Tuula Lehtimäki and Jari Salo, addresses the general benefits of green marketing strategies in B2B marketing. This conceptual paper argues that in the light of green marketing literature, four approaches to green marketing can be found. The four-cell matrix proposes that green marketing strategies are guided by both perceived and actual greenness of new products and new technology. They present strategies for firms to cope in these different situations. Most importantly, they argue that green marketing strategies should be based on an understanding of customers' green values.

The third contribution to the special issue, “Characteristics of innovation in adopting a renewable residential energy system”, authored by Aija Tapaninen, Marko Seppänen and Saku Mäkinen, examines the criteria affecting adoption of innovation in the context of residential energy solutions. This paper also utilizes the diffusion of innovation theory, and argues that prior literature has not adequately addressed the usability of the diffusion framework in green marketing. The authors suggest that practitioners should concentrate on the promotion of relative advantage in green energy solutions instead of trialling green energy systems.

In the fourth paper, Patrali Chatterjee's article “Green brand extension strategy and online communities”, discusses how loyal and non-loyal users of social networking websites perceive green brands. The results of a survey (n = 602) indicate that consumers prefer green line extensions to category extensions, and that consumers typically tend to prefer purchasing green extensions of products that have higher perceived environmental impact.

As the special issue editor, I would like to express my gratitude to the contributors for their valuable contributions, and to the reviewers, and the publisher. Finally, I also wish to thank all those who submitted a paper for the special issue that we were unable to include. Deciding which papers were best suited to the special issue topic was a task made more difficult by the number of high-quality submissions, and it is unfortunate that space restrictions mean that several strong papers could not be included in this issue.

Heikki KarjaluotoGuest Editor

Further reading

Capizzi, M.T. and Ferguson, R. (2005), “Loyalty trends for the twenty-first century”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 72-80.