Identification of factors influencing preferences for green products: a study in and around Kolkata (India)

Since the concept of environmental consciousness has become a necessity to save the mankind, promoting consumption of green products is the need of hour, owing the fact that green products are environment friendly or sustainable products and are organic in nature. It is evident that the feeling for the health of environment and consumers, the usage of green products is emerging at the cost of traditional or conventional products. However, the magnitude of usage of green products is much behind the ideal one to safeguard the consumers and environment at large. Thus stretching the incidence and depth of usage of green products is a must. In order to achieve the pious objective, it is necessary to know the factors which insisted the users to go for the green products so that the same can be ventilated to the masses for extending the consumer base for the green products. On this backdrop, this study has been undertaken to collect responses from the green product users in and around Kolkata to find out the significant factors, through factor analysis, which contribute for the popularity of the Green products. The study also tries to find out the impact of different psychographic variables with respect to popularity of green products. The findings so obtained will definitely help in augmenting the usage of green products and hence contribute to safeguard the health of consumers and environment at large.