A study on : exploring the understanding on green marketing concept among the staff of BSN in Kota Kinabalu branches / James Alixsius

Consciousness of government, businesses/industries and consumers towards environmental concerns has been consistently increasing particularly since many unexpected accidents and tragedies happened to world. Many studies and researches have been made towards Green Marketing or Environmental Marketing or Ecological marketing (which gives the same meaning to the research area). As society becomes complex with the environmental pollution and unethical business practices, now government and business organizations are concerned with the natural environment. Most of marketing practitioners are using green elements as the green marketing issues. In this context, this study focuses on exploring the understanding on green marketing concept among staff of BSN especially on their awareness towards green products. The understanding of green marketing/green products among the BSN staffs is relatively high where all of them are aware of the concept. However, the concept of green purchasing is relatively low to the staffs as more half of them are still not buying or consume green products or environmental eco-friendly products that available as alternatives to the conventional or traditional products. The main barriers for the staff for not buying green products are price, quality, trust and choice. Although the staffs are willing to pay a premium up to 10 percent for the green products, they are not sure of the quality of the products. The trust on the quality is still exit and moreover, the staffs have their choices to consume conventional products. The responsible of manufacturers and marketers is to promote their green products by emphasizing the products are produced using cleaner technology, clean production, pollution prevention, adoption of the Environmental Management System (EMS), and the ISO 14000 series certifications. With the environmental standards and enforcement becoming more stringent, it is believed that the consumers will change their buying behavior and will buy and consume more green products.