1. Responsible production : the way into the heart of the customer?
- Author
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Floss, Tove and Bergfeldt, Anna
- Subjects
brand strategy ,sustainable development ,grön kommunikation ,ansvarsfull produktion ,hållbar produktion ,green marketing ,grön marknadsföring ,green communication ,Ekonomi och näringsliv ,varumärkesstrategier ,Economics and Business ,sustainable production ,responsible production ,hållbar utveckling - Abstract
Responsible production is a subject of increasing importance for companies toadopt and communicate to their environment and many companies choose to implementenvironmental – and ethic considerations into their brand strategy. There is, however, adividing line between companies according to what extent they choose to implementresponsible production into their brand strategy and to which extent they choose tocommunicate it to their stakeholders and surroundings. It is the hypothesis about a dividingline that is the foundation for this essay and something we believed could be interesting forfurther analysis.The purpose of our essay is to find out how the brand strategy of a company is affected by theresponsible production and in what extent they communicate it to their environment. Byanswering those questions we hope to find out why some companies communicateresponsible production more actively than others.We have conducted in-depth interviews with the Swedish clothing companies; MariaWesterlind, Zion and Dem Collective and we have through our analysis reached interestingconclusions. It is evident that the more distinct the company positions itself regarding theenvironment, the more important the responsible production seems to be to the brand strategy.This affects in what way and to what extent the company chooses to communicate with thecustomers. In other words, the bigger environmental exposure and the bigger environmentalmarket possibilities the more important and more active the communication gets.Those companies that have responsible production as a primary brand value also tend tocommunicate this in greater extent than other companies although there is not always aconnection. The greater control the company has over the supply chain, the more distinct thecommunication becomes. The majority of the companies use external certifications as a formof sponsorship to get certain benefits. We also have noticed that the more distinct thecompany communicate their responsible production, the more important the extent of theinformation to the customer gets. Program: TextilekonomutbildningenUppsatsnivå: C
- Published
- 2008