Consumer behaviour: Sweeten the sustainability pill
Corporate efforts to encourage more sustainable consumer behaviour should concentrate on making it easy for their customers to change
In 2010, consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble set itself an ambitious goal: by 2020, 70% of washing machine loads worldwide will be done in cold water. P&G’s big rival, Unilever, adopted a similar target, though it was formulated in a slightly different way. It said it would encourage consumers “to wash at lower temperatures and at the correct dosage in 70% of machine washes by 2020”.
Meeting these goals would result in a huge sustainability pay-off: energy savings and thus less burning of fossil fuels, and lower electricity bills for consumers. As the two companies own some of the world’s leading laundry brands – among them Ariel, Persil, Surf and Tide – the impact could be substantial.
But the goals have required a huge behavioural shift away from the notion that hot water is always better for getting clothes clean, and towards acceptance of a different way of doing things....
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Changing consumer behaviour
Good points. People will do things if they're attractive and easy (i.e., they want to do them, and nothing prevents them achieving that). Yet very few sustainability comms do this: most bang on too much about WHY we want people to do something, rather than WHAT we want them to do.
Hence a direct application of marketing, to make something attractive is surprisingly rare in sustainability. I spoke about this at TED here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZSLGmb_RU