Retail Corporate Sustainability

Why retailers need to be much more creative in telling their sustainability stories to consumers

25 May 2008 – Article

• Over the last several years, sustainability or corporate responsibility issues, such as environment, employee practices and supply chain conditions, have become more prominent in the global media, and for global brands and retailers. There are a variety of reasons for this increased prominence. For example, some companies have been pushed by campaign groups, others have employees pushing them on the agenda, and others have started to see first-hand how issues such as climate change or water scarcity are impacting their value chains.

• One reason also cited by many brands and retailers (as well as sustainability pundits) is growing consumer interest in buying sustainable products and services. Evidence for this heightened interest are the numerous surveys released over the last few years that have found that a majority of consumers care about sustainability issues, and that they are either willing to pay more for goods produced in a more sustainable way or will choose the more sustainable product, all else equal.

• However, as much as we would like these surveys to be true, we have not yet seen this translate into action: Consumer interest, awareness and willingness to pay have not yet converted into a situation where the majority of the consumers are opening their wallets to make more sustainable choices. Even for the highly-committed consumer, sustainability criteria are getting more numerous and complicated by the day: How does a consumer decide what to choose when faced with a growing number of labels and standards (e.g. organic, fair trade, local, carbon neutral)?

• We therefore posit that brands and retailers need to act as ‘choice editors’, removing unsustainable products and putting more sustainable choices on their shelves. We believe that such editing is quickly becoming part of the brand contract: Consumers are coming to expect that brands and retailers are making the right decisions for them. To do this credibly, retailers need to look thoroughly at the impacts of their products and services across the value chain, from supplier to consumers and even post-consumer impacts and engage a wider set of stakeholders.

• This article was published as “Retailers as Choice Editors” in
  European Retail Digest – Oxford Institute of Retail Management
  Issue 56 (Winter 2007-08).

• Author’s Note: Our first observation of this specific term (“Retailers as Choice Editors”) came from a report from the UK Sustainable Development Unit.

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