Abstract:

The environmentalism movement has the potential to significantly change marketing in the 90's, not only in Europe, but throughout the developed world. Although the issue has been widely publicised, most recently in reference to the Gulf war, measuring changes in environmental awareness has been fraught with difficulties. Above all, it has been difficult to establish a link between attitudes expressed in surveys and behaviour. GfK, through its subsidiary G&I, has recently reworked its existing environmentalism segmentation. A scale of environmental awareness has been developed and linked to the Euro-Styles life-style typology. The relationship between environmental awareness and age, education and life-style was tested separately, whereby life-style was found to be the most discriminating variable. The typology, introduced into consumer panels across Western Europe, allows the validation of altitudinal research with concrete purchasing behaviour for the first time, and gives interesting insights into environmental awareness itself.