Abstract
Making consumption practices more sustainable means incorporating new ideas, information and products into existing consumption routines of citizen-consumers. For a successful incorporation process it is crucial that companies, as main providers of new products and services, develop an active orientation on consumers and their practices. We argue that the core elements of a consumer orientation of companies can refer to (i) improvement of the environmental performance of the company (ii) provision of environmental information on both the direct and indirect environmental impacts and (iii) images and narratives on sustainable consumption. In practice, companies show considerable variation with respect to both the contents and the level of their consumer orientation, making it possible to distinguish between different types of company strategies. While recognizing that company-consumer interactions on sustainable consumption have developed most strongly in OECD countries, we argue that our conceptual approach is of immediate relevance to emerging economies due to the globalization of both company strategies and public audiences.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example the CONTRAST research project, www.enp.wur.nl/uk/research
- 2.
Joseph Huber, in his more recent work, clearly distances himself from a citizen-consumer oriented environmental policy, as can be read from the following quote: “A paradigm shift from downstream to upstream implies a parallel shift in the emphasis of policy. Environmental policy will again have to focus on industrial production, while not spending too much time on user behavior and consumer demand. Demand, though, has an important role to play. But it is manufacturers of end-products such as buildings, vehicles, appliances and consumer goods, and also large retailers, who are in the position to effectively implement supply chain management. This is none of a user’s nor of a government’s business.” (Huber, 2004: 22)
- 3.
The distinction between “direct” versus “indirect” pressure on the environment is especially used in research into energy use, but in our opinion this distinction has a broader applicability (Vringer & Blok, 1995). It is worth noting that in literature on company environmental management “direct impacts” usually refers to impacts of the company itself (on-site impacts), while “in-direct impacts” refers to impacts upstream and downstream, including impacts of products in the consumption stage. Here we use the terms in accordance to the consumer perspective.
- 4.
Although we continue to speak of “product chains”, the analysis presented here is more generally applicable to networks of providers and users. In the sphere of energy, water and waste services, for instance, we can speak of the distinction between “before” and “after” the meter: inside the house the citizen-consumer is the boss and he/she is responsible, while he/she can exercise only limited power on the expert systems responsible for building, maintaining and well-functioning of the network or “grid” before the meter. The meter, literally, functions as the “shift” between end-users and providers (Van Vliet, 2002; Hegger, 2007).
- 5.
In CSR literature we can speak of a business case – more sustainable products and services lead to the creation of surplus value for the company, including (1) creating economic value (efficiency; finding new markets; distinction by means of an extra quality in a “saturated” market); (2) creating reputational value; and (3) parenting advantage (Dan & Kim, 2003).
- 6.
For example in the domain of housing, there existed many labels and information schemes which are hardly used at all in consumption practices. Both real estate agents and citizen-consumers buying and selling a house turned out to be only scarcely aware of the possibilities to incorporate environmental labels into this practice (see Putman & Van den Burg, 2007). This was one of the reasons why the Dutch government decided to introduce an integrated environmental label for all houses to be bought and sold from 2008 onwards.
- 7.
One of the issues to be confronted in this area is the distinction between “environmental” criteria in the strict, technical sense of footprints, emissions, and energy-use on the one hand and broader social images of sustainable development on the other. The process of the “cultural (re)embedding” of technical environmental criteria in broader, attractive images of the good society is an issue taken up for example in VROM 2005.
- 8.
The Toyota Prius presents an interesting case of environmental framing: initially, it was promoted as an environment-friendly car; later, its high-tech character was emphasized, and currently, the environmental qualities are highlighted again (Nijhuis & Spaargaren, 2006).
- 9.
When comparing different consumption domains for their environmental story lines and narratives, it can be argued that some domains (for example housing) are very much influenced by the environmental technologies related “engineering rationality”, while in other domains “life-world and lifestyle” rationalities are more prominent (for example clothing and travel).
- 10.
Different retail chains show different aspects of the sustainable development strategies of retailers: Whole-Foods (US) makes a special case of showing that sustainability can go along with premium quality; Tesco (UK) illustrates the fact that sustainability transitions can be organized within a relatively short period of time; Colruyt (Belgium) combines the greening of their product assortment with a concomitant greening of their retail production processes. The list could be extended with many other national chains and their particular contribution (see also Oosterveer, Guivant, & Spaargaren, 2007).
- 11.
The instrument of the regular counting of eco-products in retail outlets is used by ENGOs in different European countries to put pressure on retail chains to enhance their environmental performance.
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Spaargaren, G., van Koppen, C.S.A.K. (2009). Provider Strategies and the Greening of Consumption Practices: Exploring the Role of Companies in Sustainable Consumption. In: Meier, L., Lange, H. (eds) The New Middle Classes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9938-0_5
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