A Study of Green Marketing Practices in the Food Processing Industry of India

: Green marketing initiatives focus on the values and efforts that various companies incorporate into their marketing portfolio. The practice is driven by environmentally-conscious-consumers, who demand eco-friendly, healthy and sustainable products and services from organizations that they perceive to be socially-responsible and do business with. This article analyses the green marketing process and practices prevalent in the food industry of India. Green marketing, along with greening the product and the firm by converting the 4Ps (price, product, promotion and place) of marketing into 4Ps of green marketing, involves a careful understanding of consumer preferences and purchase decision process. An in-depth review of the recent literature indicates that most of the aspects of green marketing align synergistically with the framework in the developed nations and, though it may appear to lag behind momentarily, it is catching-up quickly among Asian countries, including India. With the conscious-consumer at the helm, green marketing is increasingly viewed as a relevant marketing strategy in India towards sustainable development of the food industry. A questionnaire-based survey method was used for the data collection from food companies in India. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and made use of other statistical tools and evaluations as well.The data presented in this study was also drawn from the World Bank repository of food processing companies of India. In India, the demand for environmentally-safe and green food products has been at the lower level, as the consumers perceive these options to be expensive and not offering much special benefits to them. In the long-term, both the consumers and the food processing industry stand to benefit greatly from such green marketing initiatives and awareness but the policies and strategies need to be formulated and implemented accordingly. This article recommends that the Government of India and various business organizations work together to adjust and promote the marketing elements to Indian consumers so as to increase the acceptance, accessibility and affordability of the green products.