SWITCH-Asia Network Facility
European Union

Workshop 1A: Sketching motivators and barriers for mainstreaming sustainable products (Part 1)

A SWITCH-Asia workshop in collaboration with IGES and Consumers International

 

Developing Asian countries will comprise about 43 percent of worldwide consumption by 2030. Without addressing consumption, sustainable products and services cannot be mainstreamed. 

 

In Part 1, the participants worked on getting a clear picture of tomorrow’s most important consumer groups. This was done by profiling personas of urban middle class consumers, low-income people, public procurers and corporate purchasers. Our speakers having an insight into the decision-making behaviour of these consumers will elaborate on factors motivating and preventing them to purchase and consume sustainably. In Part 2 of the Workshop, the strategies and tactics targeting a particular consumer group to break the barriers and to leverage the motivators were consolidated.

Visual summary of the workshop: Motivators and barriers for major consumer groups to switch

Why addressing consumer groups

Walter Kennes, European Commission, Regional Programmes Asia

In his opening words, Mr. Walter Kennes from European Commission, Regional Programmes Asia (Environment and Forestry), Development and Cooperation said, “Just recently we have reached 7 billion and about 60% or 4 billion of this world population now lives in Asia. And every one of these people is an individual consumer. By 2030, consumer spending in Asia is expected to reach about 40% of worldwide consumption. That is why without addressing major consumer groups and understanding their behaviour a switch to sustainable products and services is not possible. Consumption is the other side of the SCP coin and SWITCH-Asia Programme encourages projects to put focus on both sides.”

Reduce per-capita resource use

Lewis Akenji, IGES

Lewis Akenji from IGES reemphasized the scale of the challenge by making a reference to a recent UNEP publication ‘Resource Efficiency: Economics and Outlook for Asia and the Pacific’ that they contributed to and said, “One of the conclusions of the report is that there is a need for a revolution in the way core products and services like food, housing, mobility, energy, and water are provided. If we like to use resources sustainably in Asia, then per-capita resource use should be reduced to 20% of what is found in current systems.” Lewis added this would mean Factor 5 resource efficiency improvements. If this is our challenge, what could motivate major consumer groups in this switch? What could be stopping them to make this switch?

Main Asian Consumer Groups in Year 2020

To ease the task of finding answers to these questions, the workshop focused on ‘personas’ of five major consumer groups including urban middle class consumers, low-income people, public procurers and corporate purchasers. Speakers having expertise in decision-making behaviour of these consumers suggested most observed factors motivating and preventing them to purchase and consume sustainably (see below speakers’ slides).

The responsible choice needs to be the easy choice

Indrani Thuraisingham, head of the Consumers International Office for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East

“Our main challenge is making the responsible choice the easy choice for all consumers” was our first speakers, Indrani Thuraisingham’s core message. Consumers International has found that consumers are sceptical due to too many labels and lack of understanding of on-pack labels. Lack of transparency and credibility of product performance are the second big issues. How to provide consumers with easy guidance to buy sustainably? Indrani said that mainstreaming sustainable consumption on the one hand is about mainstreaming eight consumer rights including right to safe products and services, right to be informed and right to healthy environment. And on the other hand, consumers have the responsibility to question the price and quality of goods and services and consider the impacts of consumption.  According to Consumer International’s Ethical Trade Fact Finding Process conducted in 2010, middle-class is willing to buy green if given a choice.  But willingness can’t easily translate into action. One big barrier is limited access due to high price and lack of availability.

What you think and what you do - often two sides of the coin

Hannah Lane, Ogilvy

Focusing on the middle-class consumer persona Ms. Chang, our second speaker, Hannah Lane, Senior Counsel, Ogilvy EarthOgilvy Public Relations Worldwide gave insights from their latest survey on green consumer behaviour in China. She said that action behaviour gap is also prominent in China. There is a yawning gap between people’s acclaimed and actual sustainable behaviour. But different to the West, a lot of traditionally ‘sustainable’ behaviour occurring is not recognised as such and considered as the behaviour of low-income families. Common motivators seem to be health and safety concerns, search for convenience and comfort and major life events such as arrival of a baby changing general attitude to life. Sustainability messaging needs to customized according to the consumer segments characteristics. For example, ‘Misguided Materialists’ look up to their peers and prone to ‘good life’ messages, while ‘Flexible Progressives’ like to save and maximize efficiency due to their personal background in poverty. Common barriers for the switch are high price tags, lack of knowledge around the need for change and that respondents are driven by convenience. 1300 respondents across China said governments first, corporations second and individuals have the obligation to act responsibly. Having aid that almost 80% of them like to be given guidelines on how to live a sustainable life and do it themselves, than it is legislated.

The poor has to bear high cost to access simple needs

Illac Angelo Diaz, MyShelter Foundation

Illac Angelo Diaz, Executive Director, MyShelter Foundation, Philippines stepped up thirdly to talk about the decision-making conditions of the low-income consumer persona, Mr. Suparmantputra. He said one of the challenges of small crowded communities is the darkness even during the day because of the lack of ambient light. But electricity is an expensive service for these communities. Using electricity during the day compared to just opening during the night raises the household expenses by around 40%. Using candles instead is dangerous due to the risk of fire. In addition communities need to fight with the floods causing electricity cut-off at an average 2 months a year.

Public procurer can lead as an example but needs the right tools

Rajan R. Gandhi, Society in Action Group

Rajan Gandhi, Society in Action Group talked about the encouraging and challenging factors for a public procurer like the persona, Mr. Abdul. He said based on his earlier experience the most important motivator factor for green public procurement (GPP) is that Mr. Abdul in fact needs to implement the National Policy. He also has to set an example for other institutional buyers and even individuals like his friend who is buying for the private company. He also can create economies of scale through his bulk buying behaviour. Having said that he has few barriers on the way. Even though he has the mandate to implement the legislation, it has many loopholes, environmental targets sometime conflict with social causes and there is always vested interest. Also just what is ‘green’? He has problems with defining the criteria for green products. Normally labels are only on products for individual consumers. Most importantly green products can be over-priced. How can I make sure that benefits are rightly distributed within the value chains? Finally life-cycle thinking has not yet become part of the purchasing culture. Mr. Abdul’s accountant was asking the other day why they have to pay a higher price for something that can be bought much cheaper.

 

Voices from the field

Muralidharan Thykat commenting, SWITCH-Asia Promoting Fair Trade and Sustainable Consumption in India Project

Following three SWITCH-Asia projects commented on motivating and challenging factors for various consumer groups to make a switch. Muralidharan Thykat from India said that they have conducted a market survey to find the intentions of middle-class consumers like Ms. Chang on fair trade. They found that fair trade is still not a well-known concept. Lack of awareness concerning impact of production processes is a big handicap. Also as migration to cities intensified in the last two decades, connection with nature or people behind the product have started to weaken. He added that Indian customers are do not usually know their rights as customers and what difference they can make as the market evolution has been very rapid. The opportunity would be to show them the connection between their shopping act and the makers of the products.

Chandrarathna Vithanage, SWITCH-Asia Greening Sri Lankan Hotels Project

Chandrarathna Vithanage from Sri Lanka commented on their experience with corporate purchasers like Ms. Arun. He has experience with purchasing practices of hotels. Sourcing locally usually leads to cost savings. Hotels are also motivated to manage their waste in order to avoid capturing of ugly images. In addition hotel guests are more and more demanding greener products. However, there is unfortunately still lack of interest from suppliers. Producers do not still see the business case.

Le Xuan Thinh, SWITCH-Asia Sustainable Rattan Industries Project

Le Xuan Thinh from Vietnam added more observations to the corporate purchasers situation. He said that retailer companies have a wide array of concerns from quality, design, price, export license to logistics and certification like FSC. It is very challenging to address them all. They may have never seen the production facilities before so obvious environmental impacts might not be known to them. Most importantly providing the right amount of green products might be problematic. Besides quality, quantity also matters.

For collecting input from about 50 participants in the workshop room, a half an hour moderated table discussion took place, followed by reporting. One table said that a major driver could be the Eastern culture of saving and avoidance of waste. Another table said mentioned that they talked about the importance of moving beyond the individual consumer level and addressing the family and community level. Several major barriers mentioned concerning the middle class were rapid urbanization bringing longer working hours, disturbed work-life balance, misleading claims and lack of availability.  For low-income consumers, the groups agreed that price would be a major concern as well as low level of awareness.