A Study of Green Product Industries in Taiwan

The concept of environmental protection has been developed in Western countries since the 1970s. Recently, the green industries are also flourishing in emerging Asian countries, such as Taiwan. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14024 specification, green products are the products of environmentally conscious design produced in order to protect the health of customers and to reduce impact on the environment. The three chief indexes for design of green products are low pollution, resource reduction and recycling. In relation to green product industries, value-added and concept marketing industries, Taiwan ranks fifth and has awarded environmental marks to 749 companies and 3,433 pieces of products by June 2007 (Environmental Protection Administration Government of the Republic of China 2008). Based on the model of 'the smile of value creation' (Mudambi 2007) and the theory of concept marketing, this study aims to examine the circumstances of green product industries in Taiwan and discuss their value chain system. I analyse the data and documentation of the top 20 companies which represent 52.42% of environmental marks in Taiwan. I found out most of these belong to information technology products, household electric appliances, water-saving products, recycling products and building materials companies. These companies represent their own characteristics in different sub-industries; however, they also share some common factors: in applied R&D, design, commercialization and marketing (including advertising and brand management, specialized logistics, after-sales services). In addition, they locate their branches depending on different stages of the value chain, and expand them globally.