Sustainability: What Matters Most?

16 October 2009 | Consumer behavior, How to | Jennifer Rice

I’m a big fan of analogies; one of my favorites is equating customer relationships with personal, romantic relationships. If you ask a woman about the kind of guy she wants to marry, she might say, “handsome, rich, successful and exciting.” Fast-forward a few years and we see whom she actually marries: maybe a nice, average, middle-class bald guy who happens to be the best listener and makes her feel special. Perhaps these attributes that tipped the scale were ones that she didn’t anticipate or know how to value until she experienced them.

It makes intuitive sense that what people say is important isn’t always what motivates them at the moment of choice. And yet we read poll after poll that trumpet astonishingly high percentages of consumers who say “green is important” or that they’d spend more money on green products. This is like saying that 77% of all women want to marry a rich guy. I’m sure we all recognize that this statistic is neither realistic nor helpful.

What’s more reasonable is looking at actual purchase trends of green products.  Unfortunately what’s lacking here is the answer to why consumers made the decision for one brand over another. In a recent post I wrote about sizing your total available sustainability market (TASM); in other words, how many women are in the market for a nice guy. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, this market sizing isn’t based on what consumers say but what they actually do. We look at how many women are actually dating nice guys now.

After we identify and size the market, we then seek to understand what is driving their decisions in the moment of choice. Again, this isn’t based on what they say is important, but through research techniques that unveil the top attributes that actually motivate their choice. In the dating world, the top 3 attributes that motivate choice of a nice guy could include listening, thoughtfulness and “makes me feel special.” In the sustainability space it might be education, toxin-free and “makes me feel like I’m making a difference.”

So now you’ve figured out your market and what matters most to these buyers, whether specific attributes or emotional benefits. Now the question is, how does your business rate versus other alternatives in the market? You might find that you rate quite low on the #2 purchase driver, but you get high marks for the #4 purchase driver. This tells you what to promote in marketing today while addressing the sources of dissatisfaction that may be hindering sales.

This isn’t an easy process. But what you’ll get out of it are quantifiable steps to boost revenue, reputation and competitive advantage from sustainability.

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Building the business case

16 September 2009 | Business Impact, How to | Jennifer Rice

Your company has been progressing nicely up the sustainability curve from compliance to cost savings. The next logical step is reputation and revenue generation, and it’s here that many sustainability pros hit a roadblock.

Without a CEO mandate, business units usually have little incentive to deviate from what’s been working in the past. Sustainability and CSR initiatives have safely been tucked away behind the scenes, dealing with internal and supply chain issues that reduce risk and cost to the business. Objections to customer-facing sustainability initiatives range from “Why put our neck out and risk greenwashing charges?” to “It’s still a niche market” and “Why would we promote our values for commercial ends? We’re doing this because it’s right, not to make money from it.”

Perhaps they do see that sustainability is beginning to go mainstream, but it hasn’t become a burning platform for action. And this is the big opportunity for sustainability pros. It’s time for you to change the conversation.

As pointed out in a recent EthicalCorp article, “Corporate responsibility teams could do more to articulate a clear business strategy for their company that will grow sales…. Social and environmental issues are increasingly seen as new business opportunities, rather than risks to be managed. But translating this knowledge into practical business plans is easier said than done.”

You’ll need to craft a compelling story and business case for taking sustainability to the next level within the organization. And that story must to be told using the language of numbers, making a clear connection between sustainability and top line revenue.

How you do that is the subject of a new series of articles that will cover:

  • identifying your total addressable sustainability market and your share of that pie
  • learning what you can do to protect your current base and attract new customers
  • enabling customers to experience your company as a sustainable brand through key touchpoints
  • engaging customers to boost loyalty and grow the sustainability market
  • communicating in a simple, relevant and credible way with customers

Let’s tackle the first one now. TAM, or total addressable market, is the sum of all of the potential sales that your company could make if it didn’t have any competition. In the sustainability world, we need to identify your TASM, or total addressable sustainability market, to begin building the business case.

TASM is based on an understanding of how many buyers are motivated by sustainability-related attributes when they purchase or recommend a product. It’s crucial to your strategy, and yet secondary data on this information is slim. LOHAS is a wellknown segmentation model originally designed for health & wellness, but it may or may not apply to your category. I would question whether the same segmentation model holds true across all categories including food, electronics, personal care and energy.

Without knowing exactly how many buyers in your market care enough to adjust their purchase and loyalty behavior, it will be hard to justify any customer facing initiatives. Even if the market is small for your category, it may be growing at a rapid enough pace to make a dedicated effort worthwhile. Side note: don’t believe what consumers tell you; TASM should be based on behavioral data, not a poll.

Step two is knowing what share of this market you currently own versus your competitors. Are you leading or lagging? If you increased share by one percentage point, what is the resulting revenue that you could use to fund additional projects? If you cede competitive advantage among this group to a competitor, what percent of your customer base is put at risk?

The next post will address the customer insights needed to move the needle and increase your share of this rapidly growing market.

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Role of retail in sustainability

30 July 2009 | Customer experience | Jennifer Rice

Recently I was in the market for a new laptop, so I headed over to Best Buy and a few other places to check out their selections. And of course since I’m in the business of sustainability, I was looking for a bit of education on “green” electronics: which manufacturers were leading and lagging in this area, and which PCs I should be considering for energy savings, recycled materials and recycling programs, and reduced or eliminated toxic material like PCBs?

Sure, I could have just checked out Greenpeace’s Electronics Report, but I wanted to go through the typical buyer process and see what I could learn. To my surprise, Best Buy had no information on the subject… not on signage, and not when I asked an associate. While I later found a program on their website called “Greener Together” buried in their Corporate Responsibility section, I didn’t see any evidence of it in store. At the other end of the spectrum, it wasn’t hard at the Apple store to learn more about “the world’s greenest lineup of notebooks.”

I often hear from executives, “we don’t think the market is ready for sustainability. It’s not coming up in our research as an important purchase attribute.” I’d suggest that consumers can’t care about something they know nothing about. It’s the role of retail to help consumers make educated choices. Leading manufacturers should not only be demanding sustainability from their supply chains, they should also be pushing retailers — as their main customer point of contact — to help educate the market on the choices available.

A few retailers are paving the way. Marks & Spencer in the UK is probably one of the best-known examples, although US retailers are beginning to gain traction. Home Depot is my favorite US example with Eco Options, which includes a product certification program covering over 3,000 products, product labeling, in-store signage, and even a magazine. They’ve done an excellent job evaluating the entire customer experience and enabling customers to make informed purchase choices.

Other good examples are Whole Foods, the earliest pioneer in careful product selection, Staples EcoEasy program, and REI’s Ecosensitive labeling (although it’s hard to find from the home page). As much as Wal-Mart is doing in sustainability, I’m not seeing much action in customer-facing labeling or education… that said, I don’t live near one, so if you happen to have information on what Wal-Mart is doing in the customer experience I’d love to hear it.

Bottom line: embedding sustainability into the customer experience is crucial for moving the ball forward on these issues with customers. No one cares about a press release; they care that you’re making an effort to help them make smarter choices. This is how you not only attract existing values-driven buyers, but expand the entire market.

Oh, in case you’re interested, I ended up with a 15″ MacBook Pro. I’d like to say it was for all the information they provided on environmental considerations, but it’s just an unbelievably cool computer. Bye bye PCs!

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Creating competitive advantage through sustainability

23 July 2009 | Business Impact, Sustainability | Jennifer Rice

I just published a post on Triple Pundit that fleshes out the market-facing aspects of a model I’ve been working on with The FairRidge Group. Called the Sustainability Management Maturity Model (SM3), it’s a tool to help businesses assess their readiness to address business sustainability challenges and opportunities. The internal management components were outlined last month on Triple Pundit – Strategy, Organization, Process, Measurement and People – which all relate to an inside-out perspective of the business.

As we’ve continued to evolve the model, I’ve developed another dimension for evaluating sustainability infrastructure: the outside-in perspective. This refers to the level of competitive differentiation and advantage that’s desired by the leadership team. On the scale of laggard to leader, how is your business perceived in the minds of customers, and is it where you want to be? This market-facing aspirational consideration can drive both the internal infrastructure required for a market leadership position, as well as external initiatives to improve marketing, customer experience and ultimately competitive differentiation.

The goal of the market-facing aspiration is to drive top-line revenue through increased purchase and loyalty among sustainability-minded buyers. You can accomplish that goal by strategically managing the following five external considerations:

  • Understand your Total Addressable Sustainability Market (TASM). Most businesses have a solid understanding of their total addressable market (TAM.) Yet to drive top-line revenue through sustainability, you need to measure your total addressable sustainability market (TASM): the percentage of buyers in your category that make purchase decisions based on sustainability and CSR factors. You should be asking: how large is this group, how fast is it growing, what revenue does the group represent, and what share of this market do you currently enjoy?
  • Understand your brand credibility. You’ll want to know how much permission the market gives your brand related to sustainability before making claims that could be perceived as greenwashing. Among values-driven buyers, how does your brand credibility compare against your competitors on the issues that are directly linked to driving their purchase and loyalty?
  • Determine the most effective integration of sustainability and brand strategy. A brand strategy is, in essence, a focused strategic platform that guides every aspect of the business. It should incorporate the 4Ds: Desirable by customers, Deliverable by the company, Distinctive from the competition, and Durable over time. It’s a blueprint for how you do business, as well as for the entire customer experience. How should sustainability be integrated into your brand(s): as a supporting pillar, a new sub-brand or product brand, an ingredient brand or a redefined master brand? You can read more here on this subject.
  • Redefine your customer experience. Essential for avoiding greenwashing claims, the customer experience incorporates all of the proof points necessary to build credibility for your sustainable brand. What good is it to put out a press release on your energy savings when you’re not demonstrating sustainability in your day-to-day interactions with customers? If you’re a product manufacturer, you should also consider how to work with retail or channel partners on critical areas like awareness and education. These partners impact your customer experience, and can enhance or detract from the credibility of your efforts.
  • Lastly, marketing. If you skip the previous four steps, you put your brand at risk and neglect to build a strong foundation for your sustainably minded customer segment. Assuming you’ve tackled the foundational work, you’ll have the right data to create communications that are highly relevant and desirable to customers. Your insights will guide you in speaking their language and framing sustainability in a simple way that they understand and embrace. Your positioning should be unique from all the green- and eco- messaging that’s currently overwhelming the airwaves, and stand out in a way that supports and drives your brand. Bottom line, your marketing should make it easy for prospective buyers to find, learn about and purchase products and services that support your sustainability goals. And when it’s truly effective, customers should be motivated to integrate sustainability more deeply into their lives.

Many executives are hesitant to actively create a market-facing image related to sustainability for fear of greenwashing claims or uncertainty due to the newness of the field. But assuming you’re taking care of the operational issues that could either support or sabotage your efforts, this five-step process can safely build your outside-in approach to driving competitive advantage and top-line revenue through sustainability.

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The elephant under the table

20 July 2009 | Business Impact, Sustainability | Jennifer Rice

If you couldn’t make it to the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey last month, you missed a lot of good content, networking and discussion. The big question that came out of the conference for me was, “what does capitalism look like in a dematerialized world?” In other words, is a sustainable brand an oxymoron?

Sustainability is bigger than using harm-free materials or using less energy. It requires a fundamental shift in thinking, a long-term view and an exploration of new business models. It means redefining what success looks like, such as measuring the number of PCs leased and recycled instead of millions of units shipped per quarter. It’s the difference between GM and ZipCar. In the not-too-distant future we’ll be building products to last, reversing the trend of consumerism and disposable thinking.

This vision of the world is quite threatening to the status quo. We’re facing a tidal wave of change in the coming years, and companies can choose to disrupt their own businesses or be disrupted by an innovative niche player with less to lose and a willingness to skate to where the puck will be rather than where it is right now.

And that puck is speeding towards the future fairly quickly. A recent study by A.T. Kearney showed firms with true commitment to sustainability outperformed industry peers by 15% in the financial markets in the economic downturn. Another study by Aberdeen Group found that top sustainability performers realized 16% higher customer retention rate and an 8% decrease in sustainability-related costs.

It’s time to start asking what the sustainable version of your category could look like in five to ten years, and if you’re positioned today to be a leader or laggard in that world. Perhaps capitalism will never be truly sustainable but, as in horseshoes, getting close counts. Let’s all take a good hard look at the elephant under the table — what we sell and how we do business — and ask ourselves if there’s a better and more efficient way to solve customers’ needs.

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