Utilizing a Sustainability Perspective to Solve Business Problems
Recently, as awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has increased, it has become important to incorporate a sustainability perspective into corporate activities. Examples include management that considers the working environment and human rights of workers, production of environmentally friendly raw materials, and energy conservation. In keeping with this trend, more and more people are consulting with INTAGE on surveys themed around sustainability.
In this article, we will consider how to incorporate a sustainability perspective into corporate activities by looking at actual consultations and examples of responses.
“Sustainability” spans a wide range of issues. On what kinds of themes are surveys actually being conducted? The chart shows the results of survey analysis cases using the “items of sustainable action” developed by INTAGE, broken down by use case.
From the broader perspective of management, with the growing importance of being sustainable in the value of a company, there seems to be an increasing desire to gain an objective perspective on how consumers are evaluating companies with respect to sustainability. Evaluation of SDG measures is conducted in corporate image surveys.
In the initial phase of new product development, we survey the target group’s sustainability awareness and actions in order to ascertain the differences in environmental awareness between Japan and other countries and to understand consumers in new markets.
In the development phase, during which ideas are incorporated into specific product and service specifications, we conduct surveys to evaluate the acceptability of environmentally-friendly materials and packaging in conjunction with a sustainability perspective. In particular, surveys aimed at understanding the target group are the most frequently conducted. In addition, we have a track record of surveying consumers’ sympathy for and general evaluation of actions taken in connection with social issues for products and services aimed at young people, who are said to be highly conscious of sustainability.
Means of Attracting Consumers Using a Sustainability Perspective
A sustainability perspective is being sought in every phase. The clue lies in the reality of how consumers are dealing with sustainability and what they are seeking. An effective way to grasp the actual situation with consumers is to reduce it to the action level. However, since there are various levels of action, ranging from familiar actions such as energy and resource conservation to consideration of global environmental issues, it may be difficult to define “sustainable action” and create survey items in actual marketing research. Therefore, I would like to present suggestions on what kind of survey items to create.
At INTAGE, we independently determined 45 “items of sustainable action” from which the sustainability behavior of a broad range of consumers can be captured, and we ask consumers about the degree of their actions on a 5-point scale.
The items cover environmentally and socially friendly actions in various life situations related to the use and purchase of food, household goods, home appliances, automobiles, and clothing. They capture various levels of action, from conservation and energy-saving actions, which many people are doing, to actions to address global issues, such as choosing fair trade products, which few people are doing.
In this way, consumers’ awareness of the impact of their use and purchase of products can be reduced to the action level, so that we can assess what kind of packaging will be chosen by people who have a high level of action, for example, choosing a product in a refillable container or one made from recycled materials.
It is also useful to segment people with high levels of action, regardless of their specific behavior, and to survey people who are highly interested in sustainability. Using the above 45 items of sustainable action, INTAGE has developed “sustainable action segments,” which divide consumers into four segments (Super, High, Moderate, and Low) based on their level of action.
As of a survey conducted in January 2023, the Super segment with the highest level of action accounted for 6.7%, High was 32.2%, Moderate was 45.0%, and Low was 13.9%. In addition, consumers in the Super segment, with their high level of action and awareness, are influential in encouraging people around them to cooperate in sustainability by making every effort to buy sustainable products such as fair trade products and those that enable donations to NGOs.
The sustainable action segments are used to confirm how consumers who are highly interested in sustainability evaluate the company’s SDG management, and for development purposes to identify the needs of consumers who are in the target group for the product or service and are also highly interested in sustainability.
Examples of Business Themes Utilizing a Sustainability Perspective
Here, I would like to introduce two specific examples of how to incorporate a sustainability perspective into product development and how to use the aforementioned items of sustainable action and sustainable action segments.
Case1 [Food Industry]: Narrowing the Target Group for a New Product and Examining the Orientation of Development
In this case, during the development phase of a food item, we conducted a study to narrow down the target group from among the customer segments that the client was envisioning. Food manufacturers are being required to take environmentally friendly measures in the production, distribution, and disposal of raw materials. The company therefore decided to target a segment of its originally envisaged customers that is particularly compatible with sustainability and consider developing products that are acceptable to that segment.
First, we identified six food-related items from the 45 items of sustainable action, and checked for differences in actions on these items in the envisaged Segments 1 to 6. As a result, the target was narrowed down to Segments 1 and 6 as a group that is compatible with sustainability.
As shown in the chart below, Segment 1 takes more actions toward recycled materials and fair trade products than TOTAL. Therefore, an orientation for development could be to introduce recycled materials in the packaging, engage in fair trade, and promote these efforts. Meanwhile, Segment 6 takes a high rate of actions toward the purchase of locally produced foods, foods without additives, and organic vegetables, as well as the selection of recycled materials. This suggests a development orientation geared around healthful foods such as additive-free foods and organic vegetables. With this orientation as a starting point, the client was able to add the SDG essences that were compatible with their target group to their product.
Case2 [Communication Industry]: Evaluation of Measures for SDG Management
In this case, we analyzed the measures necessary to maintain the corporate image of a company working on the SDGs. Specifically, we used the sustainable action cluster to compare how people with high levels of sustainable action evaluate the measures taken by the client company and its competitors (Fig).
Looking at consumers as a whole, the client ranked third after competitors B and C in the evaluations in terms of sympathy for the measures it took, while in evaluations by the Super segment, which has the highest level of sustainable action, it ranked fifth. Based on these results, to boost its evaluation in the eyes of the Super segment, the client confirmed the content of the measures taken by competing companies B and C, which received high evaluations by the Super segment, versus their own measures, and then applied the findings to its subsequent measures.
Summary
In the future, it is thought that the sustainability perspective of consumers will be increasingly taken into account in the development of sustainability-friendly products and services and in the management of companies. However, in order to evaluate such corporate activities, it is difficult to designate what sustainable actions are and how to define consumers who have a sustainability perspective, because the concept of sustainability encompasses a broad range of values and actions.
INTAGE has been working alongside companies on such challenges by conducting surveys using the items of sustainable action and the sustainable action segments to support clients in their development of products that incorporate a sustainability perspective. Through the power of surveys, we at INTAGE strive to contribute to companies’ development of sustainable products and the realization of a sustainable society by ascertaining consumer sustainability perspectives that are changing with the times.
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