Impact of Green Marketing on Acquiring New Customers: A Study on Unilever

Business Management (Top-up)
DISSERTATION
An investigation of the impact of green marketing on
acquiring new customers: A study on Unilever.

Contents
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................3
Background to Research Topic....................................................................................................3
Background to Research Organisation.........................................................................................3
Research Rationale.......................................................................................................................4
Research Questions......................................................................................................................4
Research Aims and Objectives....................................................................................................5
Research Aim: .........................................................................................................................5
Research Objectives: ...............................................................................................................5
Structure of the dissertation.........................................................................................................5
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................7
What are the benefits of green marketing?..................................................................................7
What is the impact of green marketing in the consumer goods industry?...................................8
Increase number of customers by providing and satisfying with green marketing strategies.....9
How can Unilever implement green marketing strategies to acquire new customers?.............11
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................13
DATA ANALYSIS........................................................................................................................17
Frequency Distribution Table....................................................................................................17
Data interpretation.....................................................................................................................19
DISCUSSION................................................................................................................................28
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .........................................................................31
Recommendation.......................................................................................................................31
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................31
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................33
APPENDIX ...................................................................................................................................35
QUESTIONNAIRE...................................................................................................................35

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Background to Research Topic
Green marketing introduces to the practices of creating and advertising products that are
based on their actual environmental sustainability. There are certain examples of green
marketing such as advertising the reduced emissions related with a manufacturing process of
products and the use of post-consumer reprocessed materials for a packaging of products. It is
one element of a wider movement towards environmentally and socially (Chin, Chin and Wong,
2018). Therefore, green marketing is the marketing philosophy, which encourages production
and selling of eco-friendly products or services with proper protection of ecological balance. It is
also known as sustainable marketing and environmental marketing. Along with this, there are
various benefits of having green marketing in business practices that are more profits,
competitive advantages, increased market share, personal rewards and many more (Sharma,
2021). According to the American marketing, green marketing refers to the product’s marketing
that are supposed to be environmentally safe. There are various features of green products such
as originally grown, products are reusable, recyclable and biodegradable, do not harm and
pollute the environment etc.
Background to Research Organisation
Unilever is a selected organisation within a dissertation. It is a British multinational
consumer goods company (Groening, Sarkis and Zhu, 2018). This was founded in 1929 by Lever
Brothers branch: William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme James Darcy Lever Margarine Unie
line: Samuel van den Bergh Johann Schicht. Company is headquartered in London, England etc.
Unilever is specialising in selling and producing food, ice cream, wellbeing vitamins,
condiments, minerals and supplements, tea, coffee, cleaning agents, water and air purifiers,
beauty products, breakfast cereal, pet food, toothpaste and personal care.

Unilever has green marketing for promoting their products to the customers. Unilever uses
competitive pricing strategy with purpose to determine the most appropriate prices of the
products or services. In contrast, the premium pricing strategy includes prices which are higher
them competitions. The Unilever has said that all its United Kingdom operations or production
will be given by 100% renewable energy once signing a deal with Eneco United Kingdom to
develop an innovative wind farm within the Scottish Highlands (Unilever’s going green for the
planet and for its business model, 2017). This goes green to save money as well as appeal to
consumers. Therefore, green marketing is important for FMCG sectors in attracting larger base
of customers within minimum period of time. This turn to helps Unilever by increasing its
profitability and also assist in attainment of competitive advantages in successful manner.
Research Rationale
Main rationale behind conducting this research is to investigate the impact of green
marketing on acquiring new customers in the context of Unilever. This research is important for
several stakeholders that are Unilever, retail industry, students and researcher (Hossain and
Khan, 2018). For retail industry, current research facilitates them in increasing number of
organisations within United Kingdom. For researcher, this research is beneficial for them by
improving their research skills, which are data collection, presentation, decision making and
many more. For students, present study helps them by enhancing their understanding about the
effectiveness of green marketing in acquiring new customers towards specific brand. For
Unilever, this investigation is essential for them by improving their knowledge as green
marketing assist them in increasing number of customers within less time period.
Research Questions
 What are the benefits of green marketing?

 What is the impact of green marketing in the consumer goods industry?
 How can Unilever implement green marketing strategies to acquire new customers?
Research Aims and Objectives
Research Aim:
Main aim of the current dissertation is to investigate the impact of green marketing on
acquiring new customers in the context of Unilever.
Research Objectives:
 To determine the benefits of green marketing strategies
 To identify the impact of green marketing in the consumer goods industry
 To learn how to increase number customers by providing and satisfying with green
marketing strategies
 To assess the ways Unilever can make the green marketing strategies more effective to
acquire new customers.
Structure of the dissertation
There are several factors that will helps in completing full dissertation systematically.
These chapters are described as below;
Chapter 1: Introduction: - This is a first chapter that includes different information such as
overview of the topic, research aim, objectives, questions, rationale and many others. All this
information facilitates in doing next activities that are literature review, methodology etc.
Chapter 2: Literature Review: - This is second chapter that assist in gathering secondary data
from various sources including books, articles, journals and many more (Jia and Wang, 2019).
Main purpose of literature review is to discern the research gap in current study.
Chapter 3: Methodology: - This chapter is effective in gathering data from different types of
methodologies. These are quantitative research, questionnaire, deductive approach,
interpretivisim philosophy etc. All these are effective methods that will help investigator in
achieving research aim and objectives.
Chapter 4: Data analysis: - This is the process of evaluating gathered data from research
analytical tool i.e. frequency distribution analysis (Nedumaran, 2020). This is going to selecting

by researcher for analysing quantitative data. Therefore, this is an essential tool within a
dissertation.
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations: - This is a last chapter that assist in concluding
information about all chapters in clear and concise way. In recommendations, some suggestions
are given for enhancing the requirements of topic.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature review is defined as the chapter that provides an overview of the published
work in prior times on some specific topic. The term defines to a whole scholarly paper of a
scholarly work like articles and books. Basically, this is the chapter that gathers secondary
information which clearly means piece of information that is being already published by
someone else. This section considers different types of secondary sources such as articles,
magazines, newspapers, journals, books, publications etc. In the dissertation, literature review
holds major importance because it has great piece of information required for attaining
objectives.
What are the benefits of green marketing?
According to Chin, Chin and Wong, (2018), green marketing is referred as a category of
marketing where services and products are promoted according to the different environmental
benefits. In simpler words, it is described as the marketing of eco-friendly goods that are not
harmful for the environment. The green marketing strategies help in producing products by
considering eco-friendly production procedure. Some of the green marketing strategies include:
green pricing, sustainable packaging, sustainable design etc. Some of the benefits of green
marketing strategies include:
Improves credibility: Increased and improved credibility is one of the benefits that is
gained by an organisation. An organisation always requires have an excellent image for drawing
profits for the longer time duration. Unilever has positive vision in the market as it facilitates in
attracting more number of consumers but also attracts more number of business partners who
give value to credibility. The green marketing strategies help in improving the credibility for
organisation and they are the best option to create credibility among customers as well as
business partners.
Long-term growth: Adopting various eco-friendly methods and procedures are very
expensive in the initial days but it is very useful and worth for the long term growth of company.
The strategies of green marketing are quite good for the long term success of Unilever. In the
current times, more and more number of people consider products that are eco-friendly. The
biggest benefits for the company through green marketing strategies is the increase in number of
customers.

More chances for innovation: When Unilever has chosen to adopt green marketing
strategies then company is trying to recreate production procedure and changing raw materials
with eco-friendly materials. This ultimately offers company an opportunity and a chance to
innovate their products. Along with delivering environmental benefits, company could also offer
various benefits to the customers.
More profit: The methods of eco-friendly are quite expensive and hence it is common to
increase the price of products. The customers of Unilever are always ready to pay little extra so
that they can get appropriate quality of product. This also assists in increasing the satisfaction
level of consumers as they are performing their role appropriately in protecting the environment.
Even Unilever has recorded that the initial costs of adopting green marketing methods could be
easily recovered in initial years only.
Offers competitive edge and good for the environment: Every organisation is not an
easy task to turn into eco-friendly company and change their procedures into eco-friendly
procedures. The organisation is able to gain competitive advantages over all those companies if
they opt for the procedures and methods. The last benefit related to the green marketing strategy
is that it gives satisfaction to the customers as well as company. The company is able to leave a
better place for upcoming generations.
What is the impact of green marketing in the consumer goods industry?
According to Gustavo Jr and et. al., (2021), significance of green marketing is that
becoming the world's most environmentally sensitive organisation do not help brand if people
are not aware about it. For gaining benefits of eco-friendly policies or products, there is
requirement for company to market the activities company is operating to the targeted
demographic. It has been identified that green marketing helps Unilever to adopt procedures that
help in advertising and selling of products that are not are not harmful for the environment. The
decision of adopting green marketing strategies are very beneficial for the company especially in
the consumer goods industry because it is direct connected to the customers.
There is positive impact of green marketing in the consumer good industry because it
assists in addressing environmental issues and problems. It also promotes the goods and products
of the organisation at the same time. The green marketing strategy help consumer’s goods
industry to incorporate green marketing in the initiative of corporate social responsibility. The