Companies increasingly seek to be more sustainable, but many firms struggle to operationalize it within their supply chain or to translate the theoretical concepts into practical value for customers. Sustainability practitioners must not only sell a sustainable product or service but an entire mind-set. In this course, students will gain practical skills through working on a multi-national company-sponsored project, which seeks to bring a specific product to market on a platform of sustainability. The course will guide students, working in teams, through the process of learning the sustainability attributes of the product, assessing market-readiness, getting to know the customer (both the end consumer and intermediaries), and scoping the competition. This will in turn lead students to develop tailored value propositions and marketing tools, which will be presented in a final pitch session.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Describe the foundations of sustainability, including the Sustainable Development Goals
- Explain the drivers of, and barriers to, sustainability for corporations, both in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) industries
- Describe sustainability attributes of different Asian markets, and make targeted market-entry recommendations for a specific product
- Explain a real-world supply chain and specific sustainability opportunities within
- Conduct thorough research on customers to understand their needs and pain points
- Segment customers according to needs, pain-points, and sustainability journeys
- Develop a value proposition, based on a platform of sustainability, for a selected customer segment
- Develop a marketing tool kit to help customers increase their onward sales
To increase the demand of Vitamin D enriched eggs, students proposed a communication toolkit for egg producers in various markets in Asia to illustrate to their suppliers and customers the goodness of such fortified produce, the sustainable impact and financial savings.