Drivers and Constraints for food retailers to foster sustainable consumption by developing sustainable product assortment
Författare
Summary, in English
Food retailers might foster consumption of sustainable products by influencing both demand and supply-side characteristics, as they represent the main marketing channel of food products in most of European countries. However, only few European retailers are actively engaged in activities of sourcing and promoting more sustainable products, with current share of sustainable food in the retail assortment still being at the marginal level. At the same time, recent research has revealed that sustainable consumer choices are stimulated by the availability of sustainable product offerings: the higher the availability, the higher is consumer uptake of sustainable products. In the light of aforementioned challenge, provision of sustainable product assortment seems to be at heart of retail strategy to foster more sustainable consumption of food. However, development of sustainable assortment on behalf of retailers might be constrained by the number of factors which influence the conditions of sourcing and marketing of sustainable goods. Current paper aims to provide a systematized overview of driving and constraining forces for retailers to encourage consumption of more sustainable products by increasing share of these products in retailer’s assortment. Wide range of regulatory, market, resource and social factors/pressures are presented and analyzed. As an outcome, a number of most critical factors which encourage and hinder the retailer’s initiatives to offer more sustainable products are discussed. This contributes to better understanding of strategies which both retailers and policy-makers will have to undertake with aim to encourage more sustainable products and therefore stimulate more sustainable choices on behalf of consumers.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2012
Språk
Engelska
Dokumenttyp
Konferensbidrag
Ämne
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Nyckelord
- Food retailers
- Sustainable Consumption
- Sustainable assortment
- Drivers
- Constraints
Conference name
2nd Nordic Conference on Consumer Research, 2012
Conference date
2012-05-30 - 2012-06-01
Conference place
Gothenburg, Sweden
Status
Unpublished
Projekt
- Sustainable Store