Who Came First? The Egg or the Carton? An Analysis of Organic Packaging for Italian Retail Chain Esselunga - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 109

of green print ads grew by 430 %, and that of green TV ads by 367 %” (p. 358)
and companies like McDonalds adopted changes across its operations, including
the alteration of food packages with the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons from
manufacturing processes (Hume 1991 ). Yet, much of the talk around green initia-
tives during these early years focused on the environmental impacts of corporate
practices (e.g., pollution, waste disposal). Limited change was made in terms of
conventional (i.e., non-organic) foods, even though concerns from the population
kept rising and grass root movements were emerging (Schlosser 2001 ; Nestle 2002 ;
Pollan 2006 ). For example, in the United States the issue of organic certification and
food labels had a peak in 1998 after consumers rallied to protect organic agricultural
farming from the “U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed national
regulations for organic food” (Organic Consumers Association 2011 , pp. 19-20;
Adamoli 2012 ). The rise of food-safety scandals of the 1980s and 1990s pushed
scholars and journalists to be more involved, by publishing exposé pieces including
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser ( 2001 ), The Omnivore Dilemma by Michael
Pollan ( 2006 ), and Food Politics by Marion Nestle ( 2002 ), in an attempt to inform
the public.
With an increase on food concerns and emerging trends in the sector of organic
farming and food-labeling on the global level (e.g., ban on GMOs cultivations
in Europe, mandatory GMOs food labeling in European countries, organic food
movements), green marketing strategies adopted by firms were soon evaluated by
corporations as failing to increase revenue (Lawerence 1991 ; Ottman 1992 ; Peattie
and Crane 2005 ). King ( 1984 ) attributed the failure of green marketing from the
1990s to four business issues. This chapter focuses on two of them: 'green selling,'
and 'compliance marketing'.
Much of the failure of green marketing is associated to the exploitations of
consumers through advertisement in the form of misleading or deceptive green
messages without actually changing the company's products (Mendleson and
Polonsky 1995 ; Libery and Kneafsey 1998 ; Peattie and Crane 2005 ; Hughner
et al. 2007 ). The intention of informing potential buyers about the environmental
impacts of certain products was outweighed by a desire to sell at a higher cost
(Libery and Kneafsey 1998 ; Peattie and Crane 2005 ) due to the fact that people
had indicated willingness to pay more for green products (Canavari et al. 2002 ;
Krystallis and Chryssohoidis 2005 ; Hughner et al. 2007 ). As Peattie and Crane
( 2005 ) note, “Facile, meaningless, and unproven green claims were slapped on
unchanged products in failed attempts to boost sales, leading to mounting consumer
cynicism and suspicion, and concerns about a potential consumer backlash Some

firms have realized that their claims lacked independent authentication” (p. 361). A
recent example is the lawsuit against the company Naked Juice, which advertises
its products as natural and GMOs free when in actuality they contain synthetic and
GMOs ingredients (Goldberg 2012 ). Green selling denoted businesses' practices to
generate sales adapting a green discourse without providing changes in production
or distribution of the item(s) “in order to take advantage of any environmental
concerns of consumers” (Peattie and Crane 2005 , p. 361). This business model
resulted in consumers' cynicism, distrust for green products and companies, and

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