Project Overview

Why smart consumption? Smart consumption will benefit everyone.  We all consume every day – from buying food or clothes to booking holidays. We know that consumer demand is a key business driver for both retailers and brands. However, it’s often difficult for consumers to make more sustainable choices about how they buy and use products, which is often where the biggest impacts arise.

Sometimes clear information isn’t available when choosing products or a sustainable version just isn’t available, or customers may still lack the motivation to shop differently. That explains in part why so far sustainable products and services have been seen as ‘niche’, rather than the norm.

Because consumer-facing brands have been hesitant to ‘move too far ahead of the consumer’, we have been stuck in a vicious cycle, where most improvements have been incremental - small changes that make existing products a bit more sustainable. Whilst such improvements are moving in the right direction, they will not deliver the radical changes we need to create a prosperous world while using fewer resources. Or create a world in which we can prosper while using fewer resources.

We want to work with leading businesses to help them break this deadlock and to stimulate mainstream ‘consumer pull’ on sustainability. We believe that there are opportunities out there for businesses to unlock, that will deliver both sustainability and commercial benefit. That’s why smart consumption is one of our key retail workstreams.

What do we mean by smart consumption?

We mean a future in which:
• Sustainable products and services are mainstream, not niche
• People want to buy these products and services, as they are both affordable and desirable
• Consumer-facing brands do more than provide ‘stuff’ – and contribute positively to wellbeing and a more sustainable society
• Businesses have scaled up innovative approaches and new business models that deliver both commercial success and wider sustainability

The good news...

Leading businesses are now widening their sustainability strategies to include engaging with consumers, and helping them to make more sustainable day-to-day product and lifestyle choices. This can be seen in Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan, in Tesco’s target to help customers halve their carbon footprint by 2020, and throughout M&S’s Plan A.

An important part of this is making sustainable choices feel more mainstream. Our Mainstreaming Sustainability event in March 2010 looked at how Cadbury, Sainsbury’s and other leading brands are trying to do this.

Innovation is at the heart of this, whether it’s about developing new products or approaches that appeal to the mainstream (e.g. Ecosense paint); about sustainable marketing and engaging consumers on sustainable living; or about the environment in which people make choices about what they buy.

Looking towards more transformative change, we are also seeing high levels of interest in new sustainable business models. These deliver commercial success, within environmental limits, while delivering products and services that improve people’s quality of life.

Helping you deliver smart consumption

If you’d like to explore how Forum can help you deliver smart consumption, please contact Dan Crossley.