بازاریابی سبز و نام تجاری سبز – مورد تویوتا  Green Marketing and Green Brand – The Toyota Case

. Introduction Last century’s accelerated demographic, technological and industrial development intensified the magnitude of human activity’s effects in the environment [1]. In fact, environmental consequences such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, climate changes, biodiversity loss, acid rain, ground, water and air pollution became a global problem for humanity and life in general [2, 3]. For Costanza and colleagues [4] there are five clear evidences that our Planet is at the breaking point in terms of supportability: (1) human´s biomass appropriation, (2) climate changes, (3) ozone layer depletion, (4) planet degradation and (5) loss of biodiversity. These current and future environmental impacts rendered sustainability issues as one of contemporary societies’ most striking and worrying problems. Although the signals are not recent, environmental and sustainability questions only got into the international agenda in the 1970s. This global environmental awareness resulted from the disclosure and seriousness of various environmental accidents, the organization of events (and reports) with worldwide impact and the interest of organizations and governments as far as environmental issues are concerned. From then forward, the concern with the environment transcended frontiers and became global, attracting academic, business and social attention. In this context, the concept of “sustainable development” emerges. This concept became widely known in 1987, through the publication of a United Nations document, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development entitled “Our Common Future” [5]. Sustainable development was defined as the development that is able to satisfy the needs of current generations, without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. One thing to notice is that sustainability is seen within three pillars, (a) the environment, (b) the economy, and (c) the society, being organizations’ social responsibility included in this trilogy [6]. In this regard, if a large part of the environmental disasters are related with firms’ activities, then firms need to be part of the solution. Therefore, it’s also up to firms’ management to contribute to this goal. The challenge is to discover sustainable methods of manufacturing, consuming and living. Marketing emerges as one of the strategic areas firms can use to make current and future social wellbeing and respect for the environment compatible with their operations. Green marketing focuses on developing and marketing products and services that satisfy customer needs while taking into account environmental sustainability [7]. It allows to build a bridge between what the markets and customers want and the firms’ environmental-friendly engagements and technological offerings [8]. Firms can focus on developing new and “cleaner” products. Yet, if those products are perceived as of lower quality, overpriced, or fail to deliver on the environmental benefits, they will not attract customers, and result in a negative turn on firms’ performance [9, 10]. Hence, firms with green marketing try to look for specific customer needs, environmental aware customer profiles and ways of incorporating these insights into its offerings [11]. While doing so firms can find ways to differentiate their products and even assist the foundation of known green brands.