Offsetting the green guilt or bargaining for cheapest: discourse of green consumption of develop and developing world customers

Abstract

Green guilt in consumption or consider consumption as harmful to the environment became an increasingly acceptable concept among customers of developed world. Even within developing countries, green consumption dialogue is spread to considerable extent. But whether it reaches the acceptability of general consumer in developing part of the world is still a question. Researchers attempt to understand Asian consumers sensitive to environment in their consumption practice of air travel. Airline marketers all over the world understand customer’s green guilt and use it heavily in their promotions and communications. Carbon calculation and mitigation of the carbon emission by voluntary financial contribution of customers is a popular choice given by almost all the major airlines of developing as well as developed countries. Researchers attempt to explore the major discourses of green consumption among airline customers through such voluntary offsetting mechanism. Customer in-depth interviews are the data collection method using by researchers. Sample of ten airline passengers taken by using judgmental sampling technique were interview by researchers. Interview transcriptions analyzed using discourse analysis method in order to identify the main discourse/s of green consumption among developing country airline passengers. This research is significant by its pioneering effort of identifying the green consumption facets among developing country consumers and exploring the green consumerism discourse in relatively unexplored context of developing part of the world. Findings of this research is also helpful to identify how green guilt exists on different customer groups and identify how global phenomenon like green consumerism affected to different markets. This paper is not only having theoretical understanding of green consumption in different scenarios, it will be practically viewed on identify global solutions for environment sensitive areas.