Developing Sustainability Dialogues for Innovative Environmental Strategies Angelina Korsunova & Sanna Poikkimäki Corporate Environmental Management School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä, Finland

What is marketing?  Emphasis on need orientation  Long-term perspective  Achieving competitive advantage  Profitable customer relationship building  Communication

Challenges and strategic thinking in a corporation  Sustainability  Corporate Social Responsibility  Scarcity of resources Innovativeenvironmentalstrategiesneeded Responsiveness and perception of strategic concerns

The survey  Among residential consumers in Finland on  Face-to-face interviews, quota sampling, sample size: 477  Aim: testing the willingness of Finnish residential consumers to reduce their electricity consumption  Issues:  satisfaction with energy provider;  overall awareness and electricity saving practices;  channels of information and preferred channels;  actors that are considered responsible;

Key findings  74% would be interested to learn how much money could be saved through electricity  61.2% would like to receive more information on electricity saving practices on electricity saving practices  Preferred channels of information reception:  TV and radio (22.4%)  newspaper (18.6%)  brief instructions in a small leaflet (16.7%)  Consumer expectations on responsibility:  Energy providers (25.6%)  Manufacturers of household appliances (22.3%)  Retailers of household appliances (16%) sensitivity to monetary stimuli?

Findings elaborated.. The respondents:  are generally conscious of their own habits in relation to lighting and heating;  generally follow energy saving practices that do not require too much effort;  prefer information through convenient means  show low interest towards independent search  expect quality from the products/services delivered to them, including complete information…

Room for opportunities through  Increased communication in product life cycles, attention and analysis of consumer needs, values, beliefs and perceptions  Evolvement of consumer communication from traditional product/service promotion to communication of social and environmental issues in line with broader strategic marketing goals of the company

Opportunities from the life cycle perspective Enabling:  Increased dialogues and understanding of consumer perceptions  Creation of ”common cognitive ground”  Learning & innovativeness  Consumer empowerment

Responsible consumption promotion: from suicide to long-living thinking  scarcity of resources and excess in demand  resisting, restraining…. innovating? notion of sufficiency  meeting the expectations and trust  building strategic alliances

Food for thought … how?  to explore the needs of consumers?  can consumers participate in the development of product/service life-cycles?  to motivate and organize the dialogues?  sufficiency solutions can be identified and how the motivation evolves?