Developing Sustainability Dialogues for Innovative Environmental Strategies Angelina Korsunova & Sanna Poikkimäki Corporate Environmental Management School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä, Finland
What is marketing? Emphasis on need orientation Long-term perspective Achieving competitive advantage Profitable customer relationship building Communication
Challenges and strategic thinking in a corporation Sustainability Corporate Social Responsibility Scarcity of resources Innovativeenvironmentalstrategiesneeded Responsiveness and perception of strategic concerns
The survey Among residential consumers in Finland on Face-to-face interviews, quota sampling, sample size: 477 Aim: testing the willingness of Finnish residential consumers to reduce their electricity consumption Issues: satisfaction with energy provider; overall awareness and electricity saving practices; channels of information and preferred channels; actors that are considered responsible;
Key findings 74% would be interested to learn how much money could be saved through electricity 61.2% would like to receive more information on electricity saving practices on electricity saving practices Preferred channels of information reception: TV and radio (22.4%) newspaper (18.6%) brief instructions in a small leaflet (16.7%) Consumer expectations on responsibility: Energy providers (25.6%) Manufacturers of household appliances (22.3%) Retailers of household appliances (16%) sensitivity to monetary stimuli?
Findings elaborated.. The respondents: are generally conscious of their own habits in relation to lighting and heating; generally follow energy saving practices that do not require too much effort; prefer information through convenient means show low interest towards independent search expect quality from the products/services delivered to them, including complete information…
Room for opportunities through Increased communication in product life cycles, attention and analysis of consumer needs, values, beliefs and perceptions Evolvement of consumer communication from traditional product/service promotion to communication of social and environmental issues in line with broader strategic marketing goals of the company
Opportunities from the life cycle perspective Enabling: Increased dialogues and understanding of consumer perceptions Creation of ”common cognitive ground” Learning & innovativeness Consumer empowerment
Responsible consumption promotion: from suicide to long-living thinking scarcity of resources and excess in demand resisting, restraining…. innovating? notion of sufficiency meeting the expectations and trust building strategic alliances
Food for thought … how? to explore the needs of consumers? can consumers participate in the development of product/service life-cycles? to motivate and organize the dialogues? sufficiency solutions can be identified and how the motivation evolves?