Strategies and approaches green advertising: an empirical analysis of the Italian context

Advertising is a key–tool for marketing communication and is able to strongly affect consumer choices. The aim of this study is to analyse the dissemination and characteristics of green advertising in Italian newspapers between 2007 and the first half of 2008. The article focuses on the identification and assessment of different ways to emphasise environmental issues in advertisement, and to qualify the different characteristics of a 'green message'. In addition, a cluster analysis is applied on the collected data, classifying messages into four 'categories' that are associated with a different green communication strategy. The results show that the use of environmental information in advertising has increased quantitatively and qualitatively when compared with similar previous studies carried out in Italy. Several suggestions for the setting of a green marketing strategy clearly emerge from the analysis of our clusters.