Green Marketing: Hotel Customers’ Perspective

ABSTRACT

Green marketing should appeal to the needs and desires of environmentally concerned customers. The aim of this study was to investigate hotel customers’ perceptions of hotels’ green marketing strategies. A questionnaire containing 30 statements was used to gauge respondents’ perceptions of different hotel green marketing strategies. Using exploratory factor analysis to identify interpretable orthogonal factors, five factors were identified and interpreted: (1) Green Partnership; (2) Development of Green Products and Services; (3) Genuine Green Products and Services; (4) Higher Price for Green Products and Services; and (5) Credibility of Green Promotion. Independent t-tests and one-way analysis of variance were conducted to examine significant differences between hotel customers’ ratings of the importance of the identified factors according to demographic variables. This is one of the first research studies to examine green marketing in the hotel industry. The discussion of the findings includes some practical implications to help hotel marketers implement more effective green marketing strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Green marketing
• hotel
• factor analysis
• customers’ perceptions

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Project Reference: A-PJ64) and thank the participating hotels for their input and feedback on this project. The constructive comments of both the editor and anonymous reviewers are also acknowledged with gratitude.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Siu-wa Chan

Eric Siu-wa Chan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong SAR (E-mail: [email protected]).