GREEN MARKETING AS A TOOL INFLUENCING CONSUMER PREFERENCES AND PERCEPTION IN CHENNAI CITY

The movement of environmentalism has rapidly become a phenomenon on a global scale. The marketing industry has also risen to the occasion and is beginning to react to the environmental concerns by putting environmentally responsible marketing practices into action. Consumers in India are becoming more aware of the benefits of engaging in environmentally conscious marketing. In India, several of the firms are using environmentally friendly marketing techniques. Therefore, the idea of green marketing is not the new slogan that commercial organisations are using to ensure their continued existence. This research is to investigate how consumers' perceptions of green values are shaped by green marketing efforts made by promoters and how such perceptions influence consumers' purchase decisions about environmentally friendly and sustainable goods. It sheds more insight on customer perception as well as the effect of green marketing communication, allowing one to better understand how consumers are persuaded to choose environmentally friendly goods.The main objectives of the research are i) to examine the level of awareness of Indian consumers about green products and practices. ii) to extent the green values of the customers and iii) to identify the factors that influences the customer persuasion to buy green products. The study is aimed to study the customers’ perception towards the green marketing. The marketing tool is considered as essential part of the eco-friendly system and to protect the people from the health hazards. This study is descriptive in nature covering the customers’ awareness towards the green marketing, their perception or green values towards the marketing and the factors considered by the customers while buying the products in green marketing. The study has been carried out with 250 sample respondents from Chennai city who have been selected using the convenient sampling technique. The data have been collected using the interview schedule and Google forms. The data were analyzed using the SPSS software and simple percentage, descriptive statistics, parametric and non-parametric tests are used. It is concluded that the awareness of the respondents towards the health benefits, environmental aspects of the green products and awareness about the eco-labels and branded products availability are significantly high