green marketing and sustainable development an empirical analysis of hospitals in punjab

Abstract

newlineWith increase in climatic changes globally, marketers have started making strategies focussing Green Marketing . The objective is to shift the attention of consumers towards products having green characteristics that are termed as Green Products . Green marketing overall focuses on promoting and manufacturing only green products as they don t harm the planet earth or the ecosystem. The publicity towards going green and becoming environmentally friendly has made a far reaching influence. This is the reason that the terms like Social Marketing, Environmental Marketing or Green Marketing are becoming popular, but the word Green has become the decade s buzzword. For the increase in demand of green products and services, businesses have started focusing in the production of green products and services. The various parameters of the study are green products, green services, green environment practices that include green infrastructure and green buildings. Another parameter is green social practices. The researchers studied not only about green marketing but also the sustainable development as one of the most important advantages of adopting green marketing is to make the world sustainable. Also, for the better understanding of green marketing and sustainable development practices and their needs and problems, more than 50 research papers were reviewed sincerely and is found that so many researchers worked on green marketing and sustainable development in various fields but not enough research was done particularly in the field of hospitals that they adopt green marketing or not. Therefore, the study contributes in promoting green marketing practices especially in hospital sector. This topic was selected to understand the reality that green marketing is either an ongoing trend or is adopted for the real change in society. It was found that the majority of the respondents are aware of the benefits of green products both for health and environment. Even the decisions of government should be on the basis of sustainable development. KMO test was used to check the suitability of Factor analysis technique and Principal component analysis was also done having the highest factor loading value of 0.802. Consumers, who are aware of the green concept and its benefits especially for the environment, usually prefer green products as compared to the products that are not environment friendly. Some consumers don t even compromise with the quality or the performance of any green product or service. The present study revealed that doctors strongly agree with the concept of using environmentally sustainable products as they are the great way to preserve natural resources.