Greenwashing

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affected consumers' belief in green claims.

Around three fourths of consumers consider themselves to be environmentalist; in turn they claim to buy more green products even at the higher price of others. Of these consumers, seventy-seven percent consider the company's environmental reputation (Maronick and Andrews 1999). Greenwashing is defined as deceptively using green marketing to claim that a product or business is environmentally friendly. These green claims are often lacking accuracy, misleading for the consumer, difficult to understand, or just flat-out untrue. Companies have been known to use greenwashing to both better their reputation and to inflate prices on products that are claimed to be environmentally friendly (Gallicano 2011). In this literature review, we aim to provide consumers with an effective way to evaluate green marketing claims.

Literature Review

Companies in the United States began to recognize the growing concerns of consumers for ...

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the consumer wants are culturally influenced, earth's resources and capacity for waste are limited, and that the quality of life is not increased by increased consumption (Kotler 2011).

Once this major change in play took place, the term "greenwashing" was coined by Jay Westerveld (Gallicano 2011). The term, which had gained recognition since the mid 1980's, is used to describe the practice of making unwarranted or overblown claims of sustainability or environmental friendliness in an attempt to gain market share. It is the term for ads and/or labels that make environmental promises that are not delivered (Dahl 2010). Environmental promises or claims are defined as statements by a ...

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