As consumer demand for greater transparency by brands increases,
companies are stepping up their commitment to sustainability.
Procter & Gamble is partnering with the Malaysia Institute
for Supply Chain Innovation to help small farmers improve their palm oil and
palm kernel oil production as part of its zero deforestation goals set in April
after the consumer packaged-goods company was targeted by
Greenpeace.
“We already work with larger suppliers to trace the origin of
our supply chain, but small farmers—in places like Malaysia and
Indonesia—account for 35 to 45 percent of palm oil production,” said
Len Sauers, VP P&G Sustainability.
But brands aren't the only ones having to make decisions with
sustainability in mind. New tools and online tracking technologies aim to help
better understand consumer behavior with respect to sustainability such as
supercookies, browser fingerprinting, location-based identifiers and behavioral
tracking.
In laboratories, research on “the neuroscience of consumer
decision-making using implicit associations (people's subconscious responses to
brands), EEG (a cap to measure brainwave activity), and fMRI techniques (to
measure changes in neuron activity in the brain)” is advancing the
understanding of “the conscious and sub-conscious processes driving emotional
engagement," The Guardian
reports.
However, a majority of retailers and brands “still depend on
simplistic surveys and focus groups to study sustainability concerns and
commitments of consumers.” Like public television surveys of yore where
“self-esteem” answers led to flawed results, "social desirability" on
sustainability surveys similarly skews the data.
“While brands have been remarkably successful at feeding
universal human drives, such as the desire for adventure, power or status,
sustainability has not been seeing the same success in its messaging," the
site notes.
“What sustainability needs to create the same impact is a similar level of
insight into the best way to embrace the full range of human emotions. Because
it's human emotion that's at the heart of what motivates us.”
Practical tools in the marketplace like Ethical Barcode’s new app lets consumers
access real-time data on companies that embrace their values on issues like
child labor, animal testing and deforestation.
More Sustainable Branding:
- Macy's is installing 17 free-to-operate vehicle (EV)
charging stations outside of eight stores in the Los Angeles region by this
fall, bringing the total to 33 EV charging stations in southern California.
It's also installing energy-efficient
LED bulbs in all Macy’s store nationwide by year’s end; 20 additional
solar energy systems; and is working with vendors to reduce the use and
waste of packaging materials, integrating recycled fibers into garment tags and
using FCS-certified paper hangtags.
- The NHL, which just released its 2014 Sustainability Report,
plans to reduce the use of natural resources in business operations while
tracking and measuring the environmental impact of the sport. The League's
carbon footprint—approximately 530,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions
annually—compares favorably against annual emissions from the single largest
coal power plant in the US at 23 million metric tons.
- Sustainability
in the Tire Industry 2014 reports that green tires are driving
the industry as legislation in the developed world demands “vehicle makers and
their supply chains to minimize fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse
gases, and corporate brand managers are insisting on differentiation.”
- Hyatt Hotels is pursuing a
benchmark for sustainability efforts among its competitors in the
hospitality space. “You have to compare among peers and among the industry
segment itself to make it meaningful," Hyatt Hotels CFO Gebhard
Rainer told the Wall Street
Journal. “We’re all releasing numbers and we’re all talking
more and more about sustainability, but very often it is hard to get that
tangible comparison and know what the benchmark is, or even how that relates to
somebody else’s benchmark.”
