In my last two posts, I talked about holiday shopping becoming a little greener. I’d like to continue that discussion relating it back to current research and studies. If you did not read my last two posts, you may want to read them before reading this one to help you better understand the premise of this ongoing thread I am posting.

In this Deloitte study, twenty percent of the respondents said they will purchase more eco-friendly gifts this year. And, 14 percent are expecting to buy more organic products. Although the study did not segment out which consumer groups are responding in what way, I’d suspect that the 20% percent of the respondents would fall into the LOHAS category or at least one of the other greener consumer segments. That 20% is pretty close to what percentage of LOHAS consumers are in the nation and since we know they are the prime purchasers of green products and services for themselves and for family and friends, they would most likely be the target indicating they will purchase more eco-friendly gifts this year. One thing the study did not indicate is the definition they provided to the respondents for the term “eco-friendly.” Did they even provide one at all? The term is so misunderstood that using it freely might create potential confusion from the get go.

Historically, in the past, major retailers such as Macy’s, Kohl’s, Bed, Bath & Beyond, etc. were known for couponing and sales. Consumers often realized they did not need to pay full price for many things and waited for the sale. It wasn’t too often you noticed a specialty shop couponing or offering many sales, if any at all.

Green or LOHAS-oriented retailers are no different, few couponed and offered much on sale. Many because of the small-scale of their shops and others just to keep their value intact. And, it is known, that LOHAS consumers will spend 20% more for products and services that meet their value system. Other consumer segments such as Naturalites also have a tendency to shop based on values as opposed to many mainstream consumer groups driven by price.

Of course, a recession changes things a bit. Even the consumers willing to spend more, will spend it, but they may not have as much to spend so they’ll choose wisely where they spend those dollars. Sustainlane has started to address this with a couponing approach. Sustainlane, known for its Green Ad Network, Angie’s List of sorts for green products and services, created a way for smaller, greener, LOHAS-oriented stores to get in front of new consumers by offering them a way to save. They call it their GreenSaver, an online source for green deals.

Stevia natural plant-based sweetener, is getting a line extension of sorts into Rebaudioside A, known as Reb-A. the food and drug administration approved it as the first all-natural zero calorie sweetener, to be adopted as a key ingredient in mainstream food and beverage production. And the industry has not wasted any time. Coca-cola and Pepsico are rolling out products this month that will feature the sweetener as a more natural version of their existing one. Their plans are to extend it into their existing brands as line extensions to include Sprite, Odwalla, SoBe and Tropicana. It is yet to determine how they will be marketing these new products.

A recent article in Advertising Age indicates that there is some speculation that the addition of this sweetener could make it confusing for the beverage industry to market the product. Some of the products such as Sprite’s Green product will be marketed as having “50% fewer calories than regular sodas.” Others will have no calories at all.

The Green Brigade, a public radio website, reviewed and selected the 2008 greenwashers of the year. I’d like to recap it with my comments, of course.

Fiji, the bottled water company, was listed at the top, although, there is no rhyme or reason for this according to the review. Here is why Fiji is on their list, according to the website. Fiji’s numbers in one year:

5,500 miles per trip from Fiji to Los Angeles (the closest Fiji Water destination point in the US)

• 46 million gallons of fossil fuel

• 1.3 billion gallons of water

• 216,000,000 lbs of greenhouse gases

Their bottles are made from PET plastic with a 12% recycling rate in the US. These water bottles are often refilled by consumers releasing the chemical DEHA, considered to be a carcinogen.

Keeping all of this in mind, Fiji just release its green campagin and launched its fijigreen.com website indicating “every last drop is green.” This is a pretty bold and far reaching claim. The company has made a significant effort toward reducing their carbon footprint and is committed to become carbon negative by 2010 by:

• Reducing its packaging by 20% and increasing recycled content—keep-in-mind that PET can only be recycled in limited areas.

In My last blog post, I wrote about the 2008 Greenwashers List. I am continuing my review of this list in this post and will probably do so in my next post as well. I think that greenwashing is such an issue and companies still need to do more due diligence in developing the right green positioning that can differentiate them, but not greenwash.

In the list, The big three CEOS of the automobile industry were mentioned. They received press for now driving their hybrids to DC, versus taking private jets. I realize that if someone did the calculations, it would have been better to carpool or fly on a commercial plane, but obviously, they are still learning.

I credit them for at least taking the step in the right direction.I think they are just trying to hang on at this point, though, I think they need to think twice and analyze their overall carbon footprint for business travel in the future. Maybe they need to create a position for sustainable business travel. In these large corporations, that would be a full time job.

Clean coal was also on the list. Yes, I do agree with the review that the words “clean” and “coal” put together is an oxymoron, since burning coal is one of the leading sources of global warming emissions.

I’m continuing the discussion on the greenwashers of 2008 with a look at the last four on the list. If you missed the start of this discussion, click here.

Shell is one Greenwash Brigade’s list of greenwashers and I do agree with this one. I’ve mentioned Shell numerous times in my newsletter, click here to sign up for my newsletter and read the lastest posts, .

Shell has stretched their green claims. Here is a recap of what I said in my September 2008 newsletter, “the UK Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against Shell for the second time for a misleading advertisement that implied Shell’s operations in Canadian oil sands were sustainable. Last year, one of the corporations’ ads was censured for a claim that the company used the CO2 from its operations to grow flowers, according to a recent article in Climate Change’s newsletter.” Just click the link above to subscribe and you’ll have access to the archive from this article.

The computer industry, which I commented on in a previous post, was mentioned on the list of 2008 greenwashers. The article indicated:

I just ran across a story on a green wedding contest and knew I needed to read further. By the time you read this post, the voting process may have been started (voting starts January 12th), but the premise of this post is important. Clay Hill Farm, an event, lodging and natural wildlife habitat, had a contest to win a $40,000 complete wedding at Clay Hill Farm in York, Maine.

The five semi-finalists need to start campaigning for the wedding of their dreams and encourage the public to vote for them by ballot--an ingenious way to get exposure for Clay Hill Farm, the sponsors and the couples. Since Clay Hill Farm just became certified as a green facility in Maine, I wonder if they used this contest as an opportunity to generate exposure.

Here is a little more information on the giveaway:

This is the time of year for hitting the slopes—the ski slopes that is. Choosing your ski resort can be challenging. I just ran across an interesting blog, Inspiring Women Travelers, talking about the Ski Area Citizens Coalition and how they have created a Ski Area Environmental Scorecard.

They base their scores on things such as energy efficiency, renewable energy credits and using cleaner fuels. They voted for the top ten and the worst ten—I wouldn’t want to be on the later list.

Here’s their current top 10 for this year:

1. Aspen Mountain Ski Resort – Colorado

2. Buttermilk Mountain Ski Resort – Colorado

3. Sundance Resort – Utah

We’re in the midst of the New Year and it is time to forget about old, bad behavior and actions and focus on some new ones — some new rules. The rules I am referring to are for the green and LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) marketplace, though they could be easily used for most any marketplace. I covered these and my other 6 rules more in-depth in this month’s newsletter. Click here to sign up and read the entire article

1. Stay true to your claims. Consumers are becoming more and more educated on what it means when green claims are made through articles, the new administration, and regulations. In order to be successful in the green area, you need to stay true to your environmental claim and not spend unnecessary dollars and time trying to convince people that your product, technology or solution is green when you have very little to back it up.

I presented my session on how to effectively sell to green consumers who care and become one of the “in” brands at the National Retail Federation.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that 150-200 attended my session, the room was just about full and the conference was as well attended as last year. From what I heard, there were about 15,000 major retail executives (and those supporting the industry) in attendance and about 585 exhibitors.

This really was good testament to me that retailers are doing everything they can to educate themselves on how to get ahead despite the current economic climate. They were learning about new ways to look at consumers with my session on Holistic Green Retail Strategies and other sessions such as how consumers make unconscious decisions. I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

What was interesting to me was that the majority of the attendees were from outside the U.S. I am not sure why this surprised me as green is more of a global trend being embraced by many countries—some being further ahead that the U.S.

I wrote a white paper for the event on “Creating Authentic Green Value.” If you’d like to receive a copy of it, please email me at cchandler@marketing-insider.com. It is focused on retailers, yet would apply to most any type of industry to justify why being green is not enough and why many green initiatives don’t work.

Helping You Understand and Profit from Consumer Health and Green Trends

Colette Chandler

After conducting my seminar at the National Retail Federation’s conference this past weekend, I attended a very interesting session on conscious versus unconscious behavior from consumers. It made a lot of sense that consumers say one thing and do another. I think we all know that this happens sometimes.

This particular session focused on neuromarketing and a research study that involved brain scan technology. Martin Lindstrom was the speaker and talked about research that involved asking people what they think about a brand, then scanning their brand and finding out that they think one thing and say another.

The research revealed that the warning label, “smoking kills” actually increased people’s craving for cigarettes. Also, the research indicated that sponsorship ads that involved images that were recognizable and did not include logos, were more effective than ads with logos.

Now what does this mean? Does this mean that we should never trust what consumers tell us? I don’t think so. Much research is valid, but we do need to understand what this research means and it supports that people buy based on their values, attitudes, behaviors, etc. Sometimes we don’t know what they are and it is up to us to find out either through brain scanning software (which can be expensive) or by getting to know them.

Green consumers are some of the most misunderstood and often overlooked. They don’t always trust and believe in ads and I would suspect that they would be the ones to recognize a brand they trust without a logo versus one with one.

As I mentioned in one of my last blog posts, I spoke at the National Retail Conference where Office Depot and Best Buy spoke about their results with their greening of their operations. I am asked quite often what type of results companies should expect from going green. I always like to share what others say:

I thought of you as well as your associates when I listened to a presentation from Office Depot, Best Buy, RecycleBank and Terracycle on the ROI on going green. Here is some information I gathered that might help you in your efforts if or your customers decide to go green.

• Best Buy reported

A 101,036,793 utility bill savings

364,000 tons – carbon reduction which as a result of their waste being recycled. This was equivalent to saving 2.7 million trees and removing 247,000 cars from the road

• Office Depot reported

I just read an interesting article about a new type of lift—one that is powered by the sun and takes two people from the base of a mountain to the mountaintop and back again. It’s called the Taiyou: Solar Powered Cable Car. What an interesting concept and way to involve natural in your design. I would think this would help more ski resorts and tourist areas become greener and save on overall operational costs.

This is one of many solar-powered electronic vehicles we are seeing developed. It seems like at least once a week I am hearing about a new solar-device being introduced to the market.

As the demand increases, I am sure more of these solar-powered tools will be available in other markets.

Paying attention to these and other green trends, will allow you to incorporate some greener tools into your toolkit to position your company one step ahead of others trying to break into the green space.

Helping You Understand and Profit from Consumer Health and Green Trends

Colette Chandler

Apple is focused on its green aspects of its new MacBook, the latest notebook from Apple. It boasts that it is “free of bad chemicals like mercury and “uses less than a quarter of the electricity needed to run a light bulb.

Apple was actually fourth from the bottom in the ninth Greepeace guide to green electronics, published in November of 2008. So I would imagine after this latest MacBook, there green rating would rise.

In Greenpeace’s report, they only make three demands for manufacturers of electronic goods:

I just a recent article in a magazine (E-Environmental Magazine) about how employees can help their employers save money while helping out the planet. I immediately thought that was a great idea and a way to prove their value and do something that makes a difference. We know the economy is tough and companies need to save every penny they can—the more they can save, the more opportunity to keep the valuable employees employed.

In this article, it mentions that businesses waste precious resources such as water, energy and paper products. It also suggests what types of things businesses can do to get started down the green path. Here they are: