Marketing green buildings – well‐structured process or forgotten minor detail? Evidence from Finland

Purpose – The aim of this article is to examine the current marketing situation of sustainable buildings from a Finnish real estate developer’s perspective and deepen the market’s understanding on this subject. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical part of the paper is conducted through a literature study, and for the empirical part three different green building development projects were examined. Findings – Results indicate that the environmentally efficient characteristics of the buildings are not considered to be their major selling arguments but simply something that is expected in today’s market and thus the green marketing actions of the real estate development company were subtle and quite ineffective. Practical implications – It seems that at the moment, the marketing of sustainable buildings lacks green ambition and not all are equally convinced about their differentiation potential. However, by increasingly concentrating on the different benefits of sustainable buildings and effectively communicating those to the customers, greenness can be made into a truly competitive marketing argument. Originality/value – The technology needed to build environmentally efficient buildings and the knowledge about their benefits is available. However, the ways of marketing these benefits to the public and customers and, as a result, increasing the amount of green buildings have not been the subject of much research.