A must read is Deloitte study, Finding the Green in Today’s Shoppers: Sustainability Trends and New Shopper Insights.

In retail it’s not just location, location, location. It’s also about price and availability and in terms of the latter, companies marketing green and sustainability products and services need to listen up to a major finding in the study:

Sustainability’s appeal to shoppers is already large. Nearly all shoppers surveyed would buy green; nearly two thirds actively seek it on each shopping trip. However, since only 22 percent of the shoppers surveyed actually ?nd and buy the green products that interest them, the latent, unful?lled demand for sustainability-enhanced products must be immense. “

And as a reminder, these “Green Shoppers are a large, high-value segment of importance to retailers and many manufacturers. Green shoppers visit stores more frequently, buy more products on each trip, and demonstrate more brand and retailer loyalty.”

The already converted among consumers are NOT finding reliable information at point of purchase and are leaving empty handed or worse yet, with ecologically-impaired products. Maybe it’s time for the green business leaders to take on a less “conversion” language, be more inclusive, and make substantial investments in POP and Web-based consumer education programs. And do so in concert with members of the supply chain, especially the sales channels.

I recall hearing in a speech a year ago by Mark Lee, CEO of the consulting company, sustainability.com that work at the level of consumer education was a situation waiting to happen. It may be that as we move from “branded organizations” to a value on “authentic organizations” marketing resources will be invested in the right places and with more fact, and less emotion.

We started EarthSayers.tv, the voices of sustainability, to bring educational resources, the unfiltered voices of experts, business leaders, and citizens from all walks of life to those initiating a search, and beginning the learning cycle, on Google for the term, sustainability. We wanted to focus on finding, rather than searching, while using the power of search engines such as Blinkx.

It turns out that searching and not finding is rife throughout the entire buying cycle.