Sustainability has become one of the main aspects on which companies promote their products. However, we all are still confused when we talk about Sustainability Marketing. This article will help you distinguish between the different types of Sustainability Marketing and improve your purchasing decisions. The next time you buy a sustainable item, think about this report and reflect on whether the brand covers all the main aspects of Sustainability Marketing.
Why embrace Sustainability in Marketing?
At the beginning of the commercialisation era, Marketing adopted a production push approach. However, over the years, consumers became more influential and began to demand sustainable products that preserved the environment, workers in the supply chains, and met long-term goals for the society.
This shift caused marketing to change from a production to a consumption point of view. Marketing started to adopt a social perspective in which the society, communities, workers, ethical production, and well-being became acknowledged.
Companies become aware of the necessity of recognising the external environment. Therefore, Sustainability Marketing elaborates on the need for behavioural change to protect the needs of society, the environment, and organisational and economic goals (i.e., the triple bottom line) (Belz and Peattie, 2009). This article will present how Sustainability Marketing has evolved and help you recognise how sustainable brands should promote their products to meet the triple bottom line.
One of the first approaches used was Societal Marketing. Following this method, marketers were held responsible for their products and how consumption affects customers. This mindset has dominated the marketing plan in the past. Still, it did not consider how organisations should intervene to regulate unhealthy or unethical consumption (Belz and Peattie, 2009). Additionally, one of the main drawbacks of Societal Marketing was that it remained undebated whether organisations were accountable for harmful products and if they were considered responsible for those externalities. These inefficiencies sprung new insights on preserving the well-being of consumers to reach triple bottom line goals.
Social Marketing
Even though it can sound similar to the previous approach, Social Marketing emerged. Here, the focus was on Marketing strategies used to tackle specific macro-level issues like alcohol abuse or unhealthy behaviours, such as lack of diet or
