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Introduction
Expressions such as "decade of the environment" or "the Earth decade" have been associated to the 1990s. During this decade, social and environmental concerns took on great importance for consumer purchasing decisions ([42] Prothero, 1996; [36] Menon et al. , 1999). At the same time, firms seeking to remain competitive started to incorporate these newly-emerging concerns in their management and marketing decision-making ([51] Straughan and Roberts, 1999; [44] Rivera-Camino, 2007).
Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the relationship between consumer behaviour, marketing and the environment. Such attention has been manifested in two ways: on the one hand, there has been an increase in public awareness about environmental aspects, and, on the other hand, an increase in the evidence of environmental responsibility or green marketing activities.
Nowadays also the consumers seem to be more concerned about the environment. Such concerns have begun to be displayed in their purchasing patterns, with consumers increasingly preferring to buy the "environmentally friendly products". This trend favoured the emergence of a new segment of consumers: the green or ecological consumers.
The study here reported applies the green market segmentation concept to consumer market in Portugal. The paper starts by presenting a brief contextualisation of the concept of green marketing, as well as some alternative ways of characterising this concept. Next, the importance of market segmentation is highlighted, together with a presentation of the most relevant criteria for differentiating individuals in terms of their environmental behaviour. Relevant aspects of the research methodology are afterwards presented, as well as the empirical results and respective conclusions.
Segmentation of the green consumer market
The first attempts by researchers to establish a relationship between marketing and the environment were made in the early 1970s by authors such as [24] Kassarjain (1971), [15] Fisk (1973) and [27] Kinnear et al. (1974). For [53] Webster (1975) and [25] Kilbourne and Beckmann (1998), in these first works, focus was laid on the study of environmentally concerned consumers.
In 1975, the first workshop organised by American Marketing Association on "Ecological Marketing" took place. This workshop resulted in one of the first books on green marketing - Ecological Marketing by [18] Henion and Kinnear (1976). This publication was preceded by another book by [14] Fisk (1974) - Marketing and...