Eco-friendly entrepreneurship and sustainable development: A green business perspective

This paper sought to interrogate from green business perspective the influence of firms’ eco-friendly entrepreneurial practices on nations’ quest for sustainable development. Extant literature sees eco-friendly entrepreneurship as concerned with businesses that are operated in a sustainable manner while sustainable development connotes the balancing of economic, environmental and social manifestations of any society. Similarly, scholars identify green marketing and green procurement as the most prominent green business practices. Green marketing as a business orientation is entirely concerned with the production and consumption of products not deleterious to individuals’ health but safe to the society. Green marketing dimensions comprise green product, green place, green price, green promotion and green innovation. In spite of the inherent benefits associated with green marketing practices, certain inhibitions to green products consumption abound in literature. Prominent among the inhibitors are the general public ignorance concerning sustainable products and its consumption, scarcity of green products in the marketplace and the pervasive poverty in Nigeria. These inhibitors among several others could dissuade environmentally friendly firms from embracing green production as an orientation. This paper recommends that contingent upon the health benefits associated with the consumption of green products, consumers should take advantage of green products price notwithstanding, firms should embrace green innovation strategies, and government should embark up continuous consumers’ educations on the benefits of green products consumption. This paper canvasses that government support eco-friendly entrepreneurs with funds this would enable manufacturing firms to wholeheartedly embrace green entrepreneurial practices.