19.4 Sustainable Marketing Principles

Consumer-Oriented Marketing

Consumer-oriented marketing is a solution focused on a customer’s need. The product is designed to solve a problem, distributed for convenience, and promoted as a solution to the consumer’s needs. A consumer-oriented marketing strategy requires extensive marketing research to understand the consumer’s needs. Organizations then must design the four Ps around those needs. Finally, a consumer-oriented marketing strategy requires customer service and feedback to ensure that consumer needs are met. Zappos is known for having a customer-oriented marketing strategy. With its strategy, it focuses heavily on customer service and has assembled an extensive team that solves any issue a consumer may face with an order.

Customer-Value Marketing

Customer-value marketing seeks to provide the customer with maximum utility compared to competitors. Customers make a value exchange when purchasing a product, so they naturally ask themselves whether the cost is worth the value of the transaction. This does not mean that all customer-value products and services are inexpensive. In fact, the high price of a product might be an intentional choice by the company to attract a specific target audience. For example, Tiffany & Co. has created a luxury brand around its jewelry’s value to customers.

Innovative Marketing

Innovative marketing uses media as a method for capturing shoppers’ attention and converting them into customers. The ever-changing digital landscape offers myriad possibilities to engage an audience in an innovative marketing strategy. For example, Shedd Aquarium in Chicago took its penguins on a field trip to meet their aquatic roommates for a virtual event in 2020. During the field trip, the Aquarium broadcasted on social media and delighted animal lovers worldwide while promoting the aquarium.

Mission Marketing

Mission-driven marketing aligns purpose and brand. With mission-driven marketing, a company uses its core mission and purpose as the focus of its marketing strategies.

A mission-driven organization can be a for-profit or nonprofit, governmental or nongovernmental, public or private, or religious entity.

Charity: Water is an outstanding example of a mission-driven organization that uses marketing to inspire its audience. Its mission is to bring clean water to communities that face a clean water crisis. The founder, Scott Harrison, has his own story that inspires the mission, and storytelling is integral to implementing charity: water’s marketing strategy.

Societal Marketing

Societal marketing is most akin to the sustainability strategies discussed in this chapter. A societal marketing strategy fulfills social responsibility obligations while satisfying customer needs. Athleta, a Gap company, sells premium-priced performance apparel to female athletes. Its product is designed for a target audience of women in motion. Athleta launched a Power of She campaign to celebrate the diversity of women and serve as a societal marketing effort. Additionally, approximately 70 percent of Athleta’s apparel is manufactured from recycled and sustainable materials.²⁶