Retailers Calendar

Month
Discover new grounds in marketing &
consumer relations
9 Planning and pre-assessment
To better
understand
the retail role
in the full lifecycle
of a
product, see
UNEP’s
Greening
Shops and
Saving Costs
Guide, pg. 18.
http://www.un
ep.fr/pc/retail
In the remaining three chapters, issues regarding the consumer side of your product chains will be explored.
These issues, when they are well addressed, can increase stakeholder value for your company. It might translate
into direct financial revenue growth through market innovation and expansion, and enhance customer equity
through building better relationships with customers, suppliers, and NGO’s. Retailers in developing countries will
especially learn tips on how to open into new markets and create innovative marketing techniques.
As a retailer, you provide customers with the products and services they want and need. How can you add even
more value to your products and services through enhancement of their environmental and social attributes?
What opportunities lie along the product life-cycles? Location of these opportunities will be the focus of this
section.
Table 9.1 describes the three main areas of the consumer phase of your environmental and social work. The
second column shows questions that can be asked to scope the areas that can create the most value for
company.
Main Scope Areas
Product Sales: More
sustainable products
Customer use of
products: Reduce
use impacts
Product Disposal:
Decrease waste and
improve recycling &
reuse
What environmental and social topics can create the most value for my company and
customers?
• What products and services can help create value for our company through increasing
consumer trust?
• Can we reduce life-cycle costs of products? Can we ultimately reduce costs for our customers
and us?
• Can we extend into untapped areas to become a market leader and increase our profitability?
• How can we build customer relationships by improving the quality of products and services
addressed, for example, to support safe and effective use of products?
• Is there a potential to reduce cost of ownership to customers and improve our service offerings
to keep customers returning to us and not to our competitors?
• Can we encourage safe and effective disposal of products to show responsibility through the
product life?
• Can we prolong asset life and increase material productivity by recovering some raw materials
in partnership with our suppliers or producers?
• In what ways can we assist our customers with product disposal to improve our customer
relationships?
Table 9.1: Scoping questions to decide what areas of the consumer side to focus on in your business.
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