Awareness of Eco-label in Malaysia’s Green Marketing Initiative

Consumer awareness of the environment and preference for more environmentally benign products appears to be growing steadily around the developed world and also some developing countries. The Malaysian government too has responded very positively to this challenge. In 1996 Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) lunched the national eco-labeling program verifying products according to environmental criteria such as Environmentally Degradable, Non-toxic Plastic Packaging Material, Hazardous Metal-Free Electrical and Electronic Equipment, Biodegradable Cleaning Agents and Recycled Paper. Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (FAMA) has the Malaysia Best logo for environment friendly agriculture product and the Malaysian Energy Commission for energy efficient electrical products. But is the Malaysia consumer ready for the eco-label? Taking into consideration the infancy stage of the Malaysia green marketing initiative, traditional approach to evaluating local consumer receptiveness to the eco-label might not be suitable. This paper approaches the introduction of eco-label with two perspectives in mind. Firstly, while earlier studies from the western scholars use eco-label as a part of the augmented product, this study introduces eco-label as a separate moderating variable. Secondly, the choice of employees working in ISO14001 certified organization as the study population explore a potentially conducive place to initiate a systematic effort in developing a green consumer community. The result is very encouraging. This study has clearly shown that, with some exposure to environmental related experiences (such as those who were working with organization implementing the EMS) Malaysian consumer would indeed react positively to the eco-label. In fact, for situation that requires them to consider environmental aspects of a product that they wish to purchase, the eco-label will definitely be the crucial factor that will push them to make the right purchase choice.