Sustainability and the Consumer: Encouraging a Greener Lifestyle

As the world continues to advance in terms of purchasing power, rising consumption, and technology, sustainability perceptions are constantly evolving. The prevailing backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, the extreme climate events, and the shortage of natural resources has only pushed the need to make more sustainable choices among consumers.

Consumers have begun to realize that making more environmentally friendly choices can surely have a positive impact on the overall environment. Yet, about half of consumers choose not to buy green products for various reasons. The most common reason for this is lack of awareness.

In this context, consumer motivation can play a huge role in enhancing the adoption of greener practices. Brands can resort to sustainability marketing or green marketing initiatives to stress on the environmental benefits of using sustainable products and services, thereby encouraging green shopping.

Here are some steps involved in encouraging a greener lifestyle among consumers:

Involving the Consumer

Purpose-led branding can help companies make leaps toward developing a connection with customers while working towards the greater sustainability goal. However, brands should be aware of the factors that deter green consumer choices such as lack of knowledge, high prices, lack of trust and authenticity, and so on. These can be tackled by creating a virtuous cycle and a self-sustaining model of purpose-driven growth.

Source: Bain & Co.

For example, a large number of consumers do not prefer green brands owing to many of them being costlier. Brands can address this by ensuring that their products are priced at a fairly accessible point, resulting in better adoption of green products.?

At the same time, it is important for companies to bridge the considerable gap between “saying” and “doing.” While a huge proportion of consumers may say they prefer greener options, few of them actually go ahead and make a choice. Perhaps, the onus of converting intent to action lies with brands that are driven to make our ecosystem more sustainable.

Motivating the Consumer

The costs of moving towards sustainability are massive. We would need a whopping $6 trillion in investments for our sustainability efforts. However, our greatest investment lies in ensuring that consumers are also on board in this journey.

Several initiatives have been undertaken to motivate consumers to adopt sustainable practices.?

For instance, the Singapore Health Promotion Board introduced the Healthier Choice symbol to incentivize shoppers to make healthier choices. The idea was to enable shoppers to quickly identify healthier choices versus other options within food categories. The symbol was displayed with a QR code so consumers could scan it and collect points for every healthy choice made. These health points could then be redeemed, positively reinforcing sustainable and healthy behaviors among consumer

Source: Researchgate

Another striking example of a similar initiative was Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket ” campaign. The campaign was launched in 2011 on Black Friday to discourage people from engaging in mindless consumerism and fast fashion. Patagonia’s ad message directed consumers to buy items that were rather durable and left a lower environmental footprint. The brand spread awareness about the rising landfill waste that fast fashion tends to create, the extent of greenhouse gasses emitted, and the abundant freshwater drawn during the manufacturing process.?

Source: Potato News Today

In 2021, a noteworthy campaign to prevent food wastage was launched by the food waste prevention company “Too Good to Go.” The firm launched the “SOS Patat: save the potatoes, eat the fries'' initiative to avoid the wastage of nearly 750,000 tons of Belgian potatoes. This aimed to bring together traders and shoppers to reduce daily food waste. As a community of Food Waste Warriors, the company has created the “Too Good To Go” platform that connects traders and consumers, and the latter collects any unsold goods from local shops at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, Tesco has joined hands with WWF to reduce the business’ impact on climate, deforestation, and nature by 2030 in the WWF “Retailers Commitment for Nature.” Tesco recognizes that the food system is one of the top reasons for biodiversity loss, and therefore, 15 farmers in Tesco?s Sustainable Dairy Group (TSDG) are offered 80% seed subsidy for herbal leys , enhancing on-farm biodiversity and soil health, water quality as well as animal health.?

Walgreens has also started a new credit card program that promotes wellness among customers. The initiative is aimed at incentivizing healthy living with rewards like cashback for paying gym fees, joining fitness programs, purchasing medical equipment, and more.

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Shifting Consumer Behaviors

Climate change is an emotive issue, and who bears the burden is a difficult question. The answer might vary when offered to different stakeholders. Government plays a crucial role in deciding policy-level changes, but often this results in hiked prices that the consumers have to pay as no alternatives are provided to them. Consumer behavior change principles highlight awareness's role (behavioral interventions). Therefore, the focus must also remain on connecting consumers and sustainability. In terms of engaging the consumers, this shows that some hooks can go a long way toward a genuine brand connection with sustainability. Such ideas will make these brands winners tomorrow as sustainability becomes a more prominent agenda. Some key ideas that involve shifting this focus include a social comparison or social influence, change in habits, and evoking the proper cognition (thoughts) and affect (feelings) .?

The impact can be realized using the consumer behavioral model described below. Based on the consumers' motivation, i.e., either incentivizing or disincentivizing the act of buying a product, creates sustainable actions with the result of enhanced sustainability overall.?

To illustrate this, if consumers stop buying plastic bottles or using carrier bags, demand falls, and the products are less likely to be produced. After the plastic bag charge was introduced in October 2015 in the UK, demand reduced significantly by July 2016. The plastic bag charge wasn’t a government mandated tax so proceeds from the charge did not go to the government which saw increased contributions by supermarkets to environmental campaigns while consequently educating shoppers.

It takes a fair bit of awareness to know that no one on the planet is exempt from the impacts of higher emissions, climate change, and food shortages. Hence, brands, consumers, and governments must come together to achieve a common goal.?

Sustainability may mean many things for consumers—using eco-friendly products, following ethical practices during production, sustainable packaging, minimal wastage, and upholding human rights. Brands can take cues from what consumers perceive as sustainable and take appropriate steps to incentivize such positive behaviors.?

Only practicing sustainability will help brands encourage consumers to make greener choices. Brands must be able to translate claims and talks into solid action and let the “doing” do the “talking.” To drive consumer behavior toward sustainability, it is essential to invoke ownership by the consumers, incentivization of right choices (habit formation), and awareness of consumers as ongoing disciplines.?

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What are your thoughts on sustainability and personal responsibility as a consumer, brand owner, or policy expert? I look forward to hearing your views on the topic.?

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References

• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01973533.2021.1889553?casa_token=yZJRWhoN0LsAAAAA:WVPdNsX7lsn4GftvT6oJ8pXNefTY46fjclE1DVAyUxhF955N4QfZEKMDOU4ZxO_1b478ETULwiHp
• https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/consumer_behavior_sustainable