Summary of what we learned this week

In this second week of the course, we have explored sustainability. More specifically, we have covered:

• The principles of sustainable development.

• The meaning of sustainability within the realm of marketing.

• The concept of sustainability-oriented demarketing.

• The existence of an attitude-behaviour gap.

• The climate emergency.

• The Circular Economy

• The concept of a carbon footprint.

During the week, we have learned that:

• Demand elimination, reduction and redirection are interlinked with consumption elimination, reduction and redirection. Together they foster sustainability-enhancing and unsustainability-alleviating behaviours among consumers and businesses.

• Businesses are more likely to seek out product-market opportunities for consumption / demand re-direction, rather than product-market opportunities for consumption elimination and consumption reduction.

• An attitude-behaviour gap associated with environmentally responsible behaviours may exist because the beneficiary may not always be the consumer who engages in this behaviour, but other consumers, society at large or planet Earth.

• Certain sustainability-oriented business model innovations enable consumers to derive the benefits of a product without owning the product, i.e. collaborative consumption / shared consumption.

• In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources.

• The United Nations 2030 Agenda lists 17 Sustainable Development Goals and represents a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere.

In week 3, we will focus our exploration further still by addressing responsible marketing. We will start by unpacking fundamental theory underpinning marketing, including the societal marketing orientation. We will then explore the implementation of responsible marketing by businesses.