Taking a gamble and being brave: how companies can empower consumers to make sustainable choices
Anna Triponel & Anna Turrell
In our last piece, Wouldn’t a consumer-led movement be the most effective way to enable a level playing field for sustainable business?, we talked about the finding that although consumers increasingly care about sustainability, there are significant limitations to how able and willing they are to prioritise sustainably sourced products through their purchasing decisions.
We discussed how faced with limitations on individual consumer ability and agency to incentivise sustainable business through purchasing decisions, we have seen the mobilisation of consumers by civil society groups focused on tarnishing company reputations.
Although these efforts can lead to change, a number of factors influence the effectiveness of such approaches, such as the level of public understanding or awareness of an issue, capacity and resource constraints on the part of the coordinating groups, the level of specificity of consumer ‘asks’ to the company and the susceptibility of a company to public pressure. In short, these efforts are unable to lead to meaningful change at scale.
Faced with these inherent limitations, we urge companies to play an instrumental role to empower consumers to make sustainable choices. In a COVID-19 world, consumer interest in sustainable products has not waned — quite the contrary — and the urgency of addressing the environmental and social challenges businesses face will only increase.
No company will be immune to the uncertain and volatile times ahead, but they can decide to play a role in shaping future trends now. This requires stepping into uncomfortable spaces, telling the whole story, and taking the time to bring consumers on the journey with you.
We have found through our work that progressive companies are aware of the limits on how effectively consumers can drive sustainable business, and are instead seeking to play a role in empowering them in their daily lives. This isn’t about trying to create something new and shiny for consumers to pay attention to. Nor is it about trying to compel consumers to take interest in bigger societal issues that can feel disconnected from their realities. This is about tapping into the values of individuals and social groups and harnessing this power through consumer choice.
So where do companies need to start?
To drive sustainable business choices, companies increasingly provide enhanced transparency about product ingredients, raw materials, origin and manufacturing practices.
While this approach has limitations, primarily because of limitations on what consumers can do with this enhanced information, increasing the availability of information and making it more understandable for consumers is a necessary first step to drive more sustainable consumption practices.
Outdoor apparel and equipment company Patagonia, for instance, seeks to disclose detailed product information to drive consumer knowledge and interest in sourcing and manufacturing practices. Personal care company L’Oréal, which has specifically committed to “empower every consumer to make sustainable consumption choices”, collects and shares information on the environmental and social footprint of its products with its brands internally, and consumers externally, to shape how these products are made and influence purchasing habits. And Nestlé seeks to educate parents to improve their children’s diets and enable them to make better purchasing decisions.
Notwithstanding the ‘politics of the product’ and marketing strategies of companies targeting their potential consumers, there is a clear movement taking place towards greater transparency in the production and consumption of consumer-facing goods, and the stories told around this.
Whilst a growing area of attention for progressive companies, it’s fair to say that product transparency still remains the focus of a relatively small but engaged consumer population. However, as information about a product’s social and environmental impacts becomes more readily accessible and easy to share with consumers, it will become more mainstream and ultimately, one day, the norm online and on shelves. The recent rise in on-pack carbon labelling, and corresponding consumer support, is one example of this.
We will see consumer expectations shift in line with this movement, towards greater focus on brand and product accountability. With this mainstreaming comes the need for greater oversight of the types of information being shared with consumers to ensure that information disclosed is not false or misleading. Developing internationally recognised standards for product sustainability represents an emerging area of interest in this regard.
Beyond transparency about products and their impacts, companies are increasingly transparent about the challenges they face in driving their sustainability commitments. Sharing both successes and obstacles to achieving sustainability goals is a way to build credibility and good faith with a company’s consumers and other stakeholders, and leading companies are increasingly moving towards this level of transparency — especially as a growing number of laws expect it.
In an age of increasingly radical transparency courtesy of digital and social media, corporate perfection is met with consumer scepticism. Presenting a more realistic view of real-time progress affords companies more credibility in the eyes of the consumer.
A perennial leader in this regard is Unilever which recently reported on successes as well as lags in progress and obstacles to reaching its Sustainable Living Plan, including how challenging it was to help consumers change their behaviour and to measure the actual impact of programmes to improve livelihoods and enhance opportunities for women. Another example of forward-looking disclosure comes from Union Hand-Roasted Coffee which, in response to recent reports of companies ending sourcing from the Guatemalan coffee supply chains following media exposure, released a public statement shining the spotlight on the complex, nuanced challenges of eradicating child labour in poor, rural communities while calling on companies to reconsider withdrawal from regions afflicted by child labour. Another issue-specific example of forward-looking disclosure comes from Nestlé, which openly shared the results of human rights investigations, action plans and progress reports for modern slavery in Thailand — including the instances of forced labour and trafficking risks found in the shrimp and fishmeal supply chain of one of the company’s key suppliers.
A growing number of companies are harnessing the potential for their advertising, marketing and branding-related activities to push consumers towards more sustainable choices and contribute to a more just society. Companies increasingly embrace the use of advertisements to increase understanding of a product’s footprint, to influence consumer behaviour to make it more sustainable, or to re-position what it means to be a sustainable consumer.
This includes the example of Patagonia with its 2011 advertisement in The New York Times telling people, “Don’t Buy This Jacket”, accompanied by an ask of consumers to spend more on fewer, more durable products in light of the environmental impact of goods produced. This also includes the example of Impossible Burger reshaping what it means to eat vegan food, from the absence of an ingredient, to a tagline that emphasizes meat-alternatives without any sense of loss. Another example comes from Jaguar, positioning an eco-friendly product as a luxury item or status symbol, with the luxury experience being heightened, rather than diminished, through the consumer’s choice of an electric car. Beyond individual products, some companies have gone as far as to declare that they will get rid of brands that don’t have a societal purpose or “stand for something”, such as Unilever CEO Alan Jope’s 2019 announcement.
Whilst marketing budgets at present remain largely focused on conventional strategies, the rise in disruptive, impact advertising to harness the power of sustainability credentials cannot be ignored. As the next generation of marketers enter the workplace, bringing with them values and interests more aligned with today’s societal and environmental issues, we should expect to see greater focus on sustainable and responsible consumerism (and consumption), and the power of brand marketing to support and shape this.
Beyond using ads to sell sustainable products, some companies are leveraging their brand platforms and marketing dollars to play a role in shaping society and narratives on particular themes. This type of ‘ purpose-led’ or ’cause marketing’ allows companies to use the power of their brand to create greater consumer coalescence around issues, at a landscape level. These campaigns are not without risk, as companies expose themselves to backlash if the marketing efforts are not well thought through, or if the purpose narrative doesn’t align with public perceptions of the company or brand, or of its perceived role within society. These campaigns can centre on issues explicitly linked to the product itself, or on broader societal and environmental issues which may appear more peripheral.
These include the example of Dove (Unilever) seeking to create space for diverse perceptions of beauty, the example of Nike seeking to shine a spotlight on racism, social inequality and police brutality through its advertising with U.S. professional football player Colin Kaepernick, and the example of Heineken seeking to break down barriers between people and create shared space for challenging conversations. The ‘power of purpose’ can be transformative for companies and brands if harnessed well, and deeply damaging when it goes wrong.
Last, but by no means least, progressive companies are choosing to change their offerings and create new business models to enable their consumers to pro actively reduce their negative impacts on people and the planet through their purchases.
When it comes to creating new offerings, we have the example of companies that support recycling company TerraCycle in the 2019 launch of Loop, a service aiming to promote responsible consumption and eliminate waste through delivery of products in refillable packaging. In 2020, retailer Tesco’s partnership with Loop went live on its online grocery platform, enabling hundreds of thousands of consumers to access grocery products in reuseable formats. We have the example of Pampers (owned by Proctor & Gamble) seeking to encourage parents to responsibly recycle disposable diapers through its diaper-recycling initiative in Amsterdam. And the example of VF Corp offering repair and “re-commerce” services to reduce clothing waste.
A growing number of companies are using innovation as a market differentiator, creating entirely new business models that shift the entire sector and remake the landscape for their product or service, with sustainability at the centre.
Often this innovation has a strong digital dimension. The rapid rise and mainstreaming of the digital space within all our lives provides an excellent platform to reframe relationships between companies and consumers, in a way that few could have imagined previously.
As we spend more time online, be this for work or play, our experiences, interactions and expectations around how we purchase and consume are shifting. Direct to consumer business models, such as Amazon and Deliveroo, and innovations, such as Smol’s plastic-free, posted laundry capsules or Get Nourished’s personalised 3D printed vitamins are accelerating at pace, and enabling a level of personalised and streamlined consumer experience like never before.
In many cases, companies working to create new ways of doing business are inputting significant investment and resources to shape trends or meeting ever-evolving consumer demands. Companies that do this effectively benefit from being the “first movers” and can carve out a leadership space among their peers, or even pull the entire sector along with them.
Fairphone, a Netherlands-based social enterprise, evolved from a 2010 awareness campaign on the use of conflict minerals in mobile phones to a company selling ethical phones to spur customers towards more responsible purchasing habits. Rent the Runway, founded in 2010, pioneered the rental model for the fashion sector to reduce fashion waste. Luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney sought to build a luxury brand that uses sustainable and innovative new materials in its products and reshapes consumer perceptions about luxury and sustainability. Founder McCartney emphasizes that the brand is built around environmental and social sustainability first and foremost, saying “[t]he starting point is not Design. The starting point is Sustainability.”
In conclusion, leading companies need to empower consumers to play a role in the quest for sustainable business, if they genuinely seek to play a role in pushing companies at large to take pro-active steps to manage the adverse environmental and social impacts of their business.
Increasing transparency and visibility are necessary first steps, but the endeavour cannot end there. Those companies that will be able to measure change are those that use the full power of their business, including their advertising, marketing and branding potential to positively influence consumer behaviours and perceptions, as well as their research and development departments to assess how their products can be made in a more sustainable manner.
No company will be immune to the uncertain volatile times ahead, but they can decide to play a role in shaping future trends now.
***
The studies, examples and findings referenced in this article are further detailed in the chapter ‘Leveraging the consumer-led movement to strengthen sustainable business: Opportunities, limitations and the role of companies to empower consumers’ authored by Anna Triponel and contained in the upcoming Cambridge Companion to Business and Human Rights edited by Ilias Bantekas and Michael Ashley Stein (Cambridge UP 2021).
