This paper will touch on the following topics: the 'new consumer', how key trends in society, new cultural landscapes, and new ethics are interconnected and how they reflect the consumer's values, needs and expectations towards products, environments, brands, brand language and 'quality' in its broadest sense; how the needs, values, trends and expectations of the 'new consumer' refer directly or indirectly, to 'nature' and to 'natural elements' ; what meanings and contents are attributed to the 'natural dimension' today; and the challenges faced by industry.
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.
It is a well known fact that environmental consciousness as a social trend has been gaining ground for several years. A large amount of survey results consistently show an immense increase. A GfK survey, in which people were asked to spontaneously mention subjects about which they are worried, showed that the protection of the environment in 1980 was mentioned by only 9 6 of the interviewees. In 1986 43 % were concerned about the protection of the environment, which resulted in a climb from position 9 in 1980 to position 2 in 1986.
In this paper we are concerned with the development of a market - the passenger car section - that is to be described as narrow, for it is on the threshold of maturation, and this means a special challenge for market research and marketing strategies. In this context we shall not take into account potentials of influencing future consumer's behaviour, but want to face the problem of identifying and describing future developments and their consequences.
One of the most significant developments over the last decade has been the growing importance of environmental considerations. This has affected all walks of industrial life and there can be few manufacturing companies that have not been exposed to these pressures. The pharmaceutical industry, with its unique role in the provision of healthcare, has probably experienced these intrusive elements more than any other sector. In addition to the universal demands for pollution-free factories and risk-free products, pharmaceutical companies have had to suffer harsh jibes like "profiteering from illness". When this particular concept first surfaced, manufacturers were ill-prepared to meet such an abrasive style of criticism (and probably lost the first few rounds as a result). However, since those early skirmishes, the industry has learned fast and marshalled its counter-arguments well.
This paper deals with the design and some of the results of a feasibility study focused on the relationships between changes in the quality of the environment and human response to it. Although other relevant variables have also been included, only a part of the research i.e. the perception and evaluation of air quality will be discussed here. This paper clarifies the importance of co-operation between social researchers and scientists of other schools and shows that a better explanation is given by integrating personal and situational data. It also emphasizes the use and the utility of panels as an instrument for measuring changes in human perception and behavior.