Here’s an article I strongly disagree with though I am a follower of Joel Makeower.

Green Marketing is not over, it has yet to begin. I don’t  green marketing is failing it that few seem to understand that most people won’t chose a product just because it is green. Ask anyone in the sustainability community and they will tell you the same. Products can benefit by being green but the green aspect will not move products. Here is the blog post.

Sometimes, it’s hard to face reality, especially when a dream is so alluring. And the alluring dream of green marketing is this: that consumers would cast a vote in favor of a more just and sustainable world whenever they shop.

But the reality has been vastly different. For more than 20 years, consumers haven’t been willing to vote with their dollars. The reasons are many and complex, but the result is clearcut: With the exception of some energy-saving devices, no green product has captured more than a tiny slice of the marketplace, at least in the U.S.

Think about it: No environmentally preferable car, carpet, cleaner, cosmetic, clothing, coffee, credit card or cell phone has captured more than 2 percent of its respective market. In most cases, sales of green products represent well under 1 percent of any given category.

Even where green products do seem to be selling, it’s not primarily because of their environmental benefits. Organic foods? It’s about what we put into our bodies. Hybrid cars? They reduce costly trips to the pump. Energy Star TVs and appliances? They cut energy costs. It’s not really about the planet.

Green marketing should not be confused with public service campaigns aimed at getting people to change habits and adapt a more environmental consciousness. Changing habits — toting reusable shopping bags, biking or taking public transit instead of driving, conserving water and electricity, taking care of parks and greenspace, and all the rest — is a fundamental part of cultural shifts. Green marketing, in contrast, is aimed at getting people to buy stuff that is better for the environment.

Green marketing’s failure hasn’t been for lack of trying. Activists, community groups, government agencies, faith-based organizations, schools, scout troops, universities, and, of course, companies have been encouraging shoppers to make greener choices for years. And, as I’ve written about ad nauseum, pollsters and market researchers have fueled the fire, telling us all the while that large numbers of consumers want to make green choices when possible. A few do. But not many, and not often.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Companies’ marketing efforts have been largely half-hearted, humorless and uninspired. Green products themselves have been variously underwhelming, overpriced, inconvenient, ineffective or unavailable. Too often, green marketers have attempted to prod consumers to act by relying on guilt or by encouraging people to “save the Earth,” neither of which has turned out to be particularly aspirational or appealing.

And consumers have made it crystal clear: They don’t want to change, at least in the name of Mother Earth or the greater good. Of course, we change our buying and lifestyle choices all the time: how we communicate (email, mobile phones, texting, Twitter), how we shop (what’s a “record store”?), what we eat and drink (“functional foods,” anyone?), and what we drive and wear and do. But those choices benefit us personally, today — not some far-off forest or future.

The economic doldrums haven’t helped. The New York Times reported in April that sales are down of even the few green products that had been selling, such as green cleaners, as consumers looked for ways to cut costs. That’s been a key part of green marketing’s downfall — the “sustainability tax” associated with premium-priced green goods, as Ogilvy’s Freya Williams, put it recently in GreenBiz.com. “Bear in mind Walmart shoppers have an average of $65 a week to spend on groceries for their families,” she notes. “If you are trying to work within a $65 budget, there’s just no way you make that kind of premium work, however much you might want to.” She argues that green products should cost less, not more.

Here is the direct link to the post

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/05/16/green-marketing-over-lets-move

Green Marketing is over

As a matter of fact 73 percent of all that attended the three day Charette disagreed or strongly disagreed with the plan that McBride, Dale and Clarion have devised at the behest of many citizen objections!

The results: Compiled from a review of surveys provided by planners at the Charette. (Video was taken of the surveys and complied in another setting!)

Northern Corridor- 85.7% disagree/strongly disagree
Central Corridor- 70.1% disagree/strongly disagree
Southern Corridor- 63.5% disagree/strongly disagree
Growth and Strategies- 56.5% disagree/strongly disagree

Summary- 73.1% of Bradley County/Cleveland residents in attendance disagree/strongly disagree with the BCC Strategic Growth/Comprehensive Plan

“I was very proud to see so many citizens of Bradley County show up in force to speak out against the terribly expensive and overreaching BCC Comprehensive Growth Plan” said Donny Harwood, Tea Party of Bradley County founder and organizer, while attending the Charette.

Many “regular citizens” among them, concerned, tax paying and voting Tea Party types also filed into the Charette! Many were upset for different reasons. The construction and plans around exit 20, the encroaching business parks being built around their homes, road supervisors saying your fence and trees need to come down, many in the McDonald area, hwy 60 business owners who will lose property, people upset a fence has to go around a creek so cattle can’t walk through it, people who dont want to be annexed or rezoned or dont want a commercial business in their back yards, citizens fined by the EPA, resounding constant chatter regarding property rights and the businesses getting chosen and given tax breaks the “regular” business person doesn’t get, the cost of the project and a whole slew of other concerns permeated the mall.

My observation was the planners were overwhelmed with the negative response and were left attempting to explain away the reason the results, questionnaires and comment cards came back overwhelmingly negative on members of the tea party. We are citizens too, we just happen to be involved, engaged and vocal about our discontent with this plan! There was no gerrymandering and no agenda was set forth! We happen to know what is going on and you ask for public input and you got it, that’s all! There were also many employees on the city/county payrolls that filled out a few ballots too or you may not have gotten even 23% to agree with you on the plan!

Consultant Greg Dale was overheard saying he didn’t have time to tally the results of the public input portion of the Charette but quickly changed his tone to say he was joking when he found out that many around him wanted to see the results and were disappointed the results were not tallied for public view. He went on to say he has never seen such a negative response where so many in the community didn’t even want a plan!

Although I was there the majority of the time to oversee the Charette I met many for the first time and was very glad to see so many respond that were not in the Tea Party! I think it is a testament to our county that so many “grassroots” people are becoming involved in our local governments affairs!

We are no longer living in a time when we can ignore what our planners via our locally elected officials are doing. Our community has come alive and we are seeing what is happening and we are no longer going to take haphazard plans laying down. We live in a different time and our current environment calls for the citizens to act in a different way! We can no longer be silent as our local governments do as they please often overlooking the will of the people. Making enemies of your concerned citizens is easy. Listening to them, absorbing what they are saying, responding and thanking God every day that you have “watchmen on the wall” is the difficult part that very few practice!

It was overheard and reported to me that one of the planners was going to say that the Tea Party was stacking the surveys to look negative! My response to that accusation is if the response was overwhelmingly positive they would have had no problem reporting those findings! This is also tyranny folks, fear and intimidation from your government with repercussion for your actions! This is the sad part inside our Republic!

The accusation that the Tea Party stacked the votes is actually a compliment and a testament to the reason that tea parties were formed! Just as they were formed to protest a tax on tea from India, so be it we protest when a group of consultants and planners in coordination with their local government propose billions of dollars in cost to the taxpayer and a disrespect for their property rights!

The bottom line is the citizens, albeit some in the Tea Party, which is their well defined role, projected a positive affect on it’s community by speaking up and out about this grossly expensive and expansive growth plan delivered by out of town consultants for over a half a million dollars!

One thing that the planners, consultants and elected officials forget is that those “awful” tea party types are citizens too who are engaged, cast votes and just happen to speak up and show up when asked to for public input. This is called patriotism! This is the direct result of a Republic intact, not a socialist wanna be community where everyone listens to whatever the government says and the people agreeably nod!

The “politicians” of Bradley County should be proud of it’s patriotic people who show up when asked instead of villifying the ones who exercise their God given rights to direct their government when they step out of line. Any attempt to “make the Tea Party look bad” will be a direct push to stop a free people from freely addressing a grieveance of their government.

The Comprehensive Growth plan is not a popular one, but the overriding determining factor, regardless of the will of the people is the perceived “relief” our community gets when you bombard it with federal grants and the likes. We have seen over and over again that “spending our way out of debt” is not the answer! Smaller government, less taxes, the free market and higher accountability is the answer.

Any attempts at this point to squelch the voice of the people looks socialistic, communistic or perhaps Marxist! The best move is to stand with the people! The people are fully within their constitutional boundary to limit the size of their government and the influence they have on our daily lives.

The battle being waged should not be on the people but on the bureaucracy we call our standing government. History will stand in favor of the people, bureaucrats inside the government will fade like a silent whisper.

For now, step outside your tightly wrapped box and see that the people have spoken loudly! Try as you may but our voices will not succumb to tyrannical role players inside a rusty machine!

Today is an agreement scale for French Canada:

Strongly agree = Fortement d’accord
Agree = D’accord
Neither agree nor disagree = Ni pour ni contre
Disagree = Désaccord
Strongly Disagree = Fortement en désaccord

Thanks to Janet Harkness who explained it here.

It’s Day 4 of scale week here at the Bunker.  Today, we put together some scaling errors and ways in which scales should not be used.  These problems can lead to biased results, unintentional participant error and/or improper analysis.  Here are a few things that should be avoided if you, as a market researcher, are looking for accurate and representative results.

1) Biased/Weighted Scales

As you can see in the above scale, the level of agreement is covering more than half the scale making it weighted towards agreement.  Not only does offering more options for agreement than disagreement make the scale biased, but it creates the potential for unintentional respondent error.  People typically tend to view scales as having 2 extremes, with the middle being neutral.  The analysis that is performed could also be misrepresentative as a result.  If every respondent selected the middle of the scale, one might state 100% of the respondents are in agreement with the new ice cream being delicious.

2) Reversing Scale Order within a Survey

Reversing scale order within a survey typically won’t be as blatantly obvious as the example above, but it does happen.  As seen in the example, it’s likely that the respondent agreed with both statements but misread the scales or assumed the scales were identical.  Reversing scale order within a survey can create confusion among the respondents; one might compare it to a cereal box game in which you attempt to spot the difference between two pictures.  Some might argue that reversing scale orders can be used in an attempt to combat straight-lining of answers, but also, it can create unintentional respondent error among those who are trying to legitimately answer questions.   There are various techniques that should be used to prevent straight-lining, but this is not one of them.  Click here to read our post that goes into further detail about data quality/integrity.

3) Using Different Point Scales (5 pt, 7 pt, 10 pt)

This scaling issue may not have as much of an effect as others, but it is important to keep all scales identical within a survey.  Respondents put themselves in a state of mind where they are evaluating in terms of a certain point on a scale.  By jumping between different 5, 7, and 10 point scales, it makes it difficult for the respondent to rate statements or questions using consistent judgment.  The other problem with using different scales within a survey is that they are difficult to compare when it comes time for analysis.

In order gather quality data, it is important to use market research scales properly.  Throughout the survey it is important that all the scaling questions be uniform to reduce bias and other problematic errors.  Also, like other questions in market research, they should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive by not doubling up/overlapping categories and by covering all answers.  Avoiding these problems will only benefit your analysis in the end.

• Click Here to view the Day 1 post on Constant Sum Scaling.
• Click Here to view the Day 2 post on Semantic Differential Scaling.
• Click Here to view the Day 3 post on Likert Scales.
• Click Here to view the Day 5 post on 6 Tips for Using Rating Scales.

In high school, MySpace was the hottest thing, and I can clearly remember why it was: because girls put raunchy pictures of themselves on MySpace and it was all about being friends. Yeah that was then, this is now. I’d never upload a picture of myself with no or limited clothing onto the web unless, say, it was a picture at a pool or something. Bottom line is it would have to be a candid, not me posing in the mirror holding my own camera. I’ve come to learn that the web is a very dangerous place when it comes to what you put up. MySpace became the phishing central and it became impossible to enjoy the site without harrassment from fake users and users who already became the victim of phishing. I came to hate it because of its fakeness. It wasn’t real interaction anymore. I wanted to interact with people on the web the same way I do in person. So for that reason, I signed up for a more mature social network site: FaceBook.

The first thing I noticed about FaceBook, which I liked, was the loss of usernames. Instead, it was the person’s real name. It was a lot more mature and people there used it for what it was intended for and once I got to college, I really seen how it could be used to promote events, causes, and keep in touch with those high school classmates that went to different schools. What I started to hear more and more about as my use of FaceBook increased was that future employers actually look at your FaceBook, to scope you out so to say. 

It’s kind of scary isn’t it? Almost like some sort of Big Brother program being run where you get scoped out before you even come to an interview. I’ve been asked many times how I feel about this and while some people tend to bring up the First Amendment, right to privacy, and a whole list of bullshit that they think can justify them uploading whatever they please to the internet, the right to privacy definitely gives the right to privacy but nothing on the internet is private. In fact, the internet among all else is used more to publicize ideas and the latter. So if someone posts a note on FaceBook reliving their worst night of being wasted, they have now chosen to publicize this and whoever’s eyes may land on it is a gimmick. With websites like Google and Yahoo! and other, more advanced search engines, nearly anything can be searched out and filtered (including this blog). It isn’t rocket science.

So one day (night actually), while I was at a group interview for a summer job, the question came up: “Do you think it is fair that employers look at an interviewees profile on social networks such as FaceBook and/or MySpace?” We all had a choice of Agree, Strongly Agree, DisAgree, Strongly Disagree, which were four squares on the floor made out by tape. At first, I hesitated, waiting to see where a majority of the people went to, but then, I guess that bold side of me came out and I stood on “Agree”. It was just me, by myself and everyone else, who surprisingly were all girls, stood between “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree”. They all gave their points on how people should be granted their privacy and seperate their personal lives from their business lives. Then they looked at me and asked me why I was the only one standing where I was. My point was basically this (and while no one in the world may agree with me, understand that I am definitely entitled to my own opinion; while some out there may back their counter-opinion to mine with experiences of their own, I feel like this is how I feel and how I live):
In the workplace, we need real, honest people, and employers must always feel like they really know their employees, that’s what will make any and all businesses work. In interviews we present our possible future employers with all of our good assets – what positive qualities we present, what we bring to the table, etc. Well, I am comfortable enough with myself that I can tell a future employer my faults, my weaknesses, and where I feel I can learn to become better at, all the while keeping my professionalism and my smile. If an employer of mine decided to look at my Facebook, there isn’t much I’d be ashamed of. I am honest, and I hate to lie, so I’m frank, often times blunt, but people (good people) appreciate my honesty. I landed that job over the other people who didn’t agree with what I said. I spoke to the interviewers honestly, and told them how I really felt. When they asked about my FaceBook, I told them what I had: pictures of me being me. I’m a 19-year-old college student with no criminal record, a high school diploma, and good work ethic and values. I work hard and pick up my own slack, though sometimes, motivation drops. I’m a bit messy,  but I get the job done. Now, can you find any of that on my FaceBook? No. So what were you wasting your time trying to find?

I think a lot of the people who get caught in these awkward situations are people who obviously don’t understand. Have you ever went over your profile on a social network after adding someone to your friends list and thought, I wonder what I look like from the outside? I know I do. I portray myself exactly as I really am. For those that may be reading this that are about my age range, I suggest you do the same. Partying in college is fun. We all enjoy the freedom, but if you don’t party 7 days a week, don’t upload pictures of you only partying and drinking; show your priorities, show your normal life, that same camera at the party can work on a Tuesday morning while you’re waiting for class. Life is more than just partying, just like your employment rides on more than just you at work.

(C) Alex D. Auguste 2009