20th Century: Marketing & Sustainable Dev

• The 20th century saw unprecedented population growth, improved living standards, and increased life expectancy.
• This period was marked by technological advancements, expanding global markets, and a focus on marketing and individuality.

UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

• Gains in human well-being and economic development have come at the expense of degraded ecosystems and increased poverty.
• Failure to address these issues will negatively impact future generations.

Visualizing Sustainable Development

• It involves overlapping the three pillars of sustainability.

Institute of Marketing Definition

• Marketing identifies, anticipates, and profitably satisfies consumer needs.

CIM's 2007 Proposed New Definition

• Marketing is a strategic function creating value by stimulating and fulfilling customer demand.
• It achieves this by building brands, fostering innovation, developing relationships, providing good service, and communicating benefits.
• Customer-centric marketing yields positive ROI, satisfies stakeholders, and promotes positive behavioral change for a sustainable future.

Hui Huang and Rust (2011)

• They bridge the gap between sustainability and consumption, assuming sustainable behaviors align with self-interest.
• The study examines consumption's impact in wealthy countries, focusing on the three sustainability pillars: environment, economy, and social justice.
• It presents a model integrating consumers, businesses, the environment, and international economic/political relations.
• This model analyzes the influence of consumption, corporate environmental practices, and governmental roles in addressing overconsumption.
• Sustainability involves meeting present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet their own.
• Consumers aim to maximize their happiness, while firms maximize self-interest (profit).

Olsen (2012) Main Theory

• Value action gap: Consumers express pro-environmental attitudes but often choose non-green options.
• Green attribute trade-offs: Green products may involve trade-offs like higher price, lower performance, or reduced convenience.
• Innovation diffusion theory predicts faster adoption for innovations with superior advantages, but green innovations face negatively correlated trade-offs.
• On average, consumers are more likely to prefer green alternatives when trade-offs are not considered.
• Rebound effects: Consumers may negate environmental benefits by choosing energy intensive options when buying green products.
• Conjoint analysis helps determine how trade-offs between green and conventional attributes influence purchase decisions for cars and TVs.
• Consumers show a strong preference for green products when trade-offs aren't considered, but shift towards less green alternatives when they are.
• Evaluated car attributes include powertrain technology, energy use/emissions, acceleration, and safety.
• TV attributes include screen technology, energy cost, resolution, and screen size.
• The study predicts consumer choices for real-world products based on conjoint analysis findings.
• Adoption of green products relies on minimizing trade-offs in price, performance, and convenience.
• Positioning green products with tangible advantages increases marketability.
• Policies supporting cost reduction and technological advancements may enhance green product adoption.
• There is a need for further research on trade-off severity and rebound effects in different product categories.

CSR vs Corporate Sustainability

• CSR balances current stakeholder interest but may not align with firm survival.
• Corporate sustainability has a long-term orientation, ensuring resources for future generations and must align with firm survival.

Kim et al's Evolution of sustainability research

• Early research focused on environmental issues in marketing like pollution control and recycling (pre-1980s).
• 1980s-2000s: Shift to social dimensions, CSR, and the triple bottom line concept.
• 2011-2020: Nuance corporate sustainability strategies, stakeholder engagement.
• From 2022, there will be a corporate political advocacy and social political activism.
• Emphasis will be on responsible research, stakeholder engagement, and non-financial outcomes and sustainability reporting.

Tension Between Profitability and Sustainability

• It is debated whether sustainability initiatives enhance or hinder profitability.
• Some studies suggest positive financial returns from sustainability efforts, but others show trade-offs and mixed results.
• There is an increased focus on industry and societal-level sustainability.
• Calls are made for long-term performance measurement.
• Corporate sustainability reporting, stakeholder engagement, and greenwashing concerns are increasingly important.
• Research is needed to understand how companies can effectively balance economic, social, and environmental goals.

Consumption process

• It involves recognition of need/want, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase, and post-purchase behavior.
• Attitude vs behavior gap: Pro-environmental values often do not align with behaviors.
• Sustainable consumption optimizes environmental, social, and economic consequences to meet current and future needs.

Balderjahn et al. (2013)

• It examines the consciousness for sustainable consumption (CSC).
• CSC is defined as a state of concern to consume in a way that enhances environmental, social, and economic quality of life.
• Aims to create a holistic view of sustainability by introducing mindful consumption, building on a sense of caring for nature, community, and self for more cautious behavior.
• Pastries focused on what consumers say they do but this paper attracts actual purchases, showing how sustainability placed out a real Consumer choices.
• A six-segment consumer typology is developed based on sustainability consciousness, reflecting varied concern levels and sustainable consumption modes.
• This helps in understanding differentiated market segments in sustainable consumption.

Six-Segment Typology

• Financially careless consumers: Lack concern for debt and have low sustainability consciousness.
• Non-simplifiers: Have high income and education but no regard for sustainable products.
• Financially Careful simplifiers: Practice simple living and avoid financial burdens.
• Socially conscious financial simplified: Environmentally concerned but appreciate security and conformity.
• Sustainable, non-collaborative consumers: Strong universalism second highest income.
• Financially careful simplifier: Practice simple living and avoidance of financial burdens.
• Collaborative consumption involves sharing, borrowing, renting, or leasing goods instead of owning them.
• Voluntary simplicity describes restraining from materialism.
• Debt free consumption considers long-term financial well-being.

Acuti et al 2022

• Studies whether sustainability is always good and the greenhushing phenomenon.
• Sustainability can negatively affect companies and consumers involved in sustainable products.
• Some companies avoid communicating sustainability to avoid these effects.
• Cognitive Mechanisms: Information elaboration, product perception bias, and self-perception can lead to negative side-effects when interacting with sustainable products.
• Emotionally Aversive States: Negative emotions like anxiety, shame, guilt, and regret can arise from cognitive processes.
• Simplifying communication is important to avoid overwhelming consumers with complex information to deter choices towards sustainability.
• Greenhushing is when a company refuses to publicize ESG information due to potential stakeholder pushback.

Greenwashing

• Greenwishing is when businesses misrepresent or provide misleading information.
• Importantly, greenwashing is not static concept -It occurs on a spectrum, ranging from outright deceit to wishful thinking.
• Unintentional greenwashing is when companies hope to meet sustainability commitments but lack the means.
• Achieving these targets can undermine trust in these companies and in the broader system.
• Consumers can experience cognitive dissonance and emotion conflict when engaging in sustainable consumption, leading to inconsistent decision-making.

How the Psychological Conflict Loop Works:

• Sustainable choices create aversive states. Consumers may feel pride in making a sustainable choice but also experience regret, discomfort, or moral anxiety because of trade-offs (e.g., paying more or sacrificing quality).
• Compensatory Behavior in Future Purchases: Some consumers "license" themselves to indulge in less sustainable choices later, believing that their past good behavior justifies it (e.g., buying an eco-friendly product today but a wasteful one tomorrow).
• Long-term Impact on Behavior: Over time, this loop can lead to decreased commitment to sustainability and consumer frustration, making sustainable habits harder to maintain.
• This study finds self-actualization, not empathy, drives fair-trade consumers, leading to happiness.
• Ethical consumption is more about personal fulfillment than moral duty.
• This is the opposite from the traditional view that moral responsibility drove consumers.
• Ethical consumption is driven by morals and self-oriented motivations.

Theoretical foundations

• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs links self-actualization to ethical consumption.
• Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis: Consumers engage in ethical consumption due to empathy; however, empathy alone does not directly enhance happiness or sustain ethical behavior.
• Self-Image and Narcissism: Consumers purchase ethical products to enhance their self-image/status, not just out of concern for others.
• Attitude-Behavior Gap: Consumers may express a desire for ethical products, but fail to act due to external barriers.
• Emotional satisfaction helps bridge this gap, making repeat purchases more likely.

Hiller and Woodall, Journal of Business Ethics 2019

• Ethical consumption is often plagued by trade-offs due to complexities in perceived values and finding ethical choices harder to find.
• Authors adopt a pragmatist approach based on John Dewey's philosophical ideas, suggesting value in ethical consumption is not fixed but fluid and shaped by habits and cultural practices.
• Consumption decisions are shaped by a blend of cognitive, emotional, and habitual factors.
• Consumers perceive value in ethical choices as a form of personal advantage emerging from consumption habits without conscious reflection.

Ethical Consumption Practices

• Ethical consumption practices are established and maintained through interactions of values, identity, social influences, and personal experiences, highlighting the importance of sociocultural dynamics.
• Ethical consumption involves transient habits and dynamics of value creation.
• Consumers often perceive value in ethical decisions as an aggregate, non-deliberative consummatory experience that is deeply embedded in everyday habits and the lived experience of value.
• Ethical decision making is more practical and realistic, where choices are shaped by unique contexts and emotions.
• The "ethical consumer" is NOT a rational maximiser
• Ethical values emerge from a fluid interplay of habits, identities, and social relationships
• It involves habits, consumer identity and emotional engagement.

Hanssen (2021)

• Challenges perspectives on ethical consumption and advocates for a practice-based approach considering social structures, material conditions, and collective responsibility.
• Ethical consumption should be understood within broader social and material contexts by theorizing routinized, material, and social aspects of consumption.
• Consumption practices vary based on socioeconomic status, gender, geography, and culture.
• Social structures influence ethical consumption through differences in sustainable product access, knowledge, and norms.
• There is a shared responsibility approach, integrating policy, infrastructure, and collective action.
• Use the ethics of care to understand ethical consumption as a situated and collective practice & highlight practical, everyday ethical negotiations and not abstract moral rules.
• Ethical considerations are not separate consumer actions but embedded in broader social understandings and routines
• Ethics can influences multiple practices, but does not always does dictate behavior due to competing social and cultural factors.