How green marketing works: Practices, materialities, and images

In the managerially oriented studies that dominate the field of green marketing, the focus is on understanding how to accomplish the marketing of green products in an efficient and profitable manner (see also Ählström, Macquet, & Richter, 2009; Kilbourne, 1998b; Meriläinen, Moisander, & Pesonen, 2000). These studies set out to profile the green consumer (e.g., Baker, Thompson, & Engelken, 2004; Burke, Milberg, & Smith, 1993; Dickson, 2005; McDonald, Oates, Alevizou, Young, & Hwang, 2012; McEachern & McClean, 2002; Megicks, Memery, & Angell, 2012) and to explore how green consumers make purchasing decisions (e.g., Carrigan & Attalla, 2001; Harper & Makatouni, 2002; Leonidou, Leonidou, & Kvasova, 2010; Schröder & McEachern, 2004). Discussions within this body of work revolve around how to communicate with green consumers (e.g., Banerjee, Gulas, & Iyer, 1995; Lord & Putrevu, 1998; Zinkhan & Carlson, 1995), as well as if and how to design and implement green-marketing strategies and programmes (for a more comprehensive overview of green-marketing research, see Chamorro, Rubio, & Miranda, 2009; Charter & Polonsky, 1999; Fisk, 1998; Grove, Fisk, Pickett, & Kangun, 1996; Nair & Menon, 2008; Peattie, 2002; and, e.g., Wong, Turner, & Stoneman, 1996). While these studies generate important and useful insights into the character of green consumers and provide valuable discussions concerning the design of green-marketing programmes, they have two important limitations. First, although the matter of how green marketing should be carried out is often discussed, there are relatively few Scandinavian Journal of Management (2015) 31, 192—205