ISM AND ISEG MBA - Développement durable

Certainly there exists a risk that companies adopting such action may loose supplier support, but
this is outweighed by the increased esteem won through such action, such respect being gained
from both customer and competitor alike due to their having proposed a new viewpoint on the
market and a new interpretation of their sales offer.
Finally, these Green Companies have to try to gain the confidence of their consumers. In the
words of Robert Walker, chief executive of environment services company Severn Trent “to meet
the goal of sustainability, we must move away from a throwaway society to one that is better able
to recover resources and use them more productively. We have a key role to play, using our
expertise to help our customers meet their environmental responsibilities” 13 . His words serve to
illustrate the importance of showing to the consumer that the professionals are aware of their
environmental responsibilities and want to show that they are ready to help the consumer move in
the direction of improving collective well-being. The clear ploy is that on hearing this, customer
confidence in these product brands will increase yielding a boost in sales. Companies desirous of
gaining an ecological label can also resort to more abstract means in their marketing activities
and try to influence consumer behavior, so endeavoring to attract new customers or draw on the
loyalty of existing customers.
13 Holliday, C. O., Schmidheiny, S. & Watts, P. (2002, August). In Greenleaf Publishing (Ed.), Walking the talk.
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