How can we change consumer behaviour to benefit the environment?

The concept of of social labelling could lead to a subconscious change in behaviour, Guy Champniss writes

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More and more it seems the conversation around sustainable business and lifestyles is focusing on these three words: consumer behaviour change. More specifically, we're increasingly interested in how to bring about constructive changes that mean the demand side of the sustainability equation is working alongside the supply side. As you'd expect, almost all communication and advertising agencies are sure they can play a part – after all, isn't consumer behaviour change what they do?

But reading the comments and questions that are popping up, both on Guardian Sustainable Business and elsewhere, two schools of thought seem to be emerging. On the one hand, there are those who argue we must educate and drive awareness, and that this will be enough to engage consumers in more environmentally friendly behaviour. In other words, it's primarily a question of consumers not knowing the score: if they knew, of course, they'd act. This assumption sits underneath many of the conceptual models of consumer decision making that have been adapted in an attempt to model consumer behaviour in a pro-environmental context. So it's a case of educate and make aware, attitudes will change and behaviour will follow.

But then maybe this is not the case. Because, on the other hand, there are those who say that no matter how aware we make individuals, it is the very "otherness" of the issues that will halt any intention and action, that at the end of the day, we act in our own, short-term interests, no matter what the wider consequences are. Recent work by the WWF adopts this position, arguing that it is our collective obsession with materialism and consumerism that has pushed us to hold extrinsic, egoistic values over more transcendental values.

In this school, one approach to drive behaviour change is either to try and reframe the issues as having a personal impact (such as on the health and wellbeing of you and your family), or to adopt choice editing or influencing strategies on the supply side (this is not the position of the WWF, that is instead calling for us to "rebalance" our values systems).

There are certainly complexities within both of these schools that need further investigation. For example, in the former, the models rely on high-involvement cognitive processing, which we know is not how most of us go about everyday decision making. And, in the latter, there are questions around levels of abstraction and whether generalising behaviour to the lofty level of "sustainable" renders the development of any effective approach almost impossible.

But maybe there is something more basic that is not included in either of these approaches.

To try and make the case, I'd like to talk briefly about a new online venture in the US that could well end up having a very interesting position in this debate. The venture is called Green Decisions and has been set up by two digital-savvy entrepreneurs from the advertising and marketing worlds (I've also been involved in a small way, as an adviser). In one sentence, the site allows consumers to source any appliance for their home, where they can find not only the cheapest purchase price, but can also see the total cost of ownership over a number of years, via energy consumption figures, combined with local energy tariffs. This additional cost allows them to explore the energy efficiency of the product once it is set-up and plugged in. In a natural next step, the site also tells you the amount of carbon that the appliance will create over that period, and the number of trees required to absorb that output. It may sound basic, but stay with it, if you can – it may be that being this basic is a key.

When the idea was being developed, the founders agreed that the site would not take a pro-environmental stance, but would allow consumers to factor-in these considerations if they wanted to. In other words, they could decide whether it was important to them as an individual. Either way, it was fine by Green Decisions. As a result, when searches come back, users see purchase price, total cost and carbon cost across a single row, with the environmental data appearing last.

But what would happen if, in a confirmation email or any follow-up exchange, the data were rearranged? What if the environmental data then appeared first? Might this change the way the consumer interprets their behaviour? Might the original, "genuine" motivations for the decision be pushed out of the way by this apparent environmental motivation? Basic as it may sound, the answer could well be yes. Changing the delivery order of the data could create an alternative label with which to explain that particular action.

Research around this concept of social subconscious points us towards a compelling alternative to the schools of thought presented above. By social labelling, we're referring to the tag society gives a particular behaviour in order to make sense of it. In other words, society interprets the action and tags it with a motivation – for all to see – that it considers consistent with the behaviour. This means your individual behaviour can carry a social tag independently of the internal tag you may assign it. The big difference is that the social tag is visible to everyone.

Where this gets interesting is that these social tags can be applied to make sense of the behaviour, but they don't need to reflect the original motivation. So choosing to take the train rather than the car could be driven at the individual level by a desire to be able to read and make phone calls on the way. But society can publicly tag this behaviour as being pro-environmental in motivation. And society can applaud that motivation.

Where this research gets even more interesting, is that when a behaviour is tagged – or labelled – in this way, then the consumer is likely to behave next time in keeping with this label. So, with our person taking the train – even if their initial motivation was being able to read the paper – with the social label of being pro-environmental for leaving the car at home – they'll be more likely to approach subsequent decisions with a stronger pro-environmental stance.

This growing body of consumer psychology research is pretty big news and has a hefty impact on the two schools of thought sketched out earlier. The impact on the awareness and education approach is that we don't necessarily need to deliver that hammer blow of bad news, hoping that levels of concern will rise to the point of intervention. Instead, it's a more intuitionist approach to decision making. And the impact on the second "command and control" school is that it would appear that our environmental values (or, more broadly, "transcendental" values) are far from flatlining in the modern world. Instead, it would appear they just need a little jolt and some gentle support. It seems we do care about the wider issues after all, or rather we care about showing others that we do.

So back to Green Decisions. If consumers make decisions about any of the criteria featured but are then recognised for having made decisions on an environmental criterion, will that criterion rise in importance from that point on? With an army of caveats attached, it would appear highly plausible. What's more, this could be done as simply as re-ordering the data from the search to highlight this detail, once a decision has been made.

Of course, it wouldn't be quite so straightforward, but the evidence so far points to the practice of social labelling as having considerable potential in driving behaviour change that is pro-social, but without the associated requirements for empathy and concern as a result of values. Yes, there may well be ethical concerns over the manipulation of what people consider to be their motivations for behaving in certain ways, but I don't think we should take social labelling and other more basic concepts off the table for those alone, or at least not yet. In a world where we need pragmatic solutions, the potential seems too great.

It's ironic because in almost all communication firms the mantra is that behaviour is a product of attitude and intention, so to change volitional behaviour, you have to re-programme attitudes. Yet here, we've a model that argues for a 180-degree flip, with attitudes forming as a result of behaviour.

It's also ironic that despite being built as purposely non-judgmental when it comes to environmental decision making, Green Decisions and its peers may end up being highly instrumental in untangling at least some of the knotty conundrum that is consumer behaviour change. We secretly hope it does.

Guy Champniss is an independent brand strategy consultant, and co-author of Brand Valued: How socially valued brands hold the key to business success and a sustainable future

THE RISE OF "AWESOME"

Once it had to do with awe. Now it just means "great". How did "awesome" conquer the world? Robert Lane Greene explains (and reminisces) ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September/October 2011

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In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was awesome.

If this sounds like an irreverent approach to the famous first lines of the gospel of John, I can assure you it’s not. “The word was God,” according to the original. But repeatedly in the Bible, God is “awesome”. Nehemiah, Deuteronomy and the Psalms refer to “the great and awesome God”, “mighty and awesome”, and ask worshippers to praise his “great and awesome name”. How did this once-awe-inspiring word become a nearly meaningless bit of verbiage referring to anything even mildly good?

The first time “awesome” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1598, it was a description for someone feeling awe, rather than someone inspiring it. But it wasn’t too long before the now-traditional meaning made its first recorded appearance: “A sight of his cross”, wrote a Scottish Presbyterian sermoniser in 1664, “is more awsom than the weight of it.”

The King James Bible, published in 1611, does not use “awesome”: God is “terrible” in the passages above. This makes sense, since as Proverbs tells us, “fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and in those days “terrible” still had a strong connection to “terror”. But over the centuries, “terrible” picked up its now-common meaning, first of “shockingly bad”, and by the early 20th century, just plain “bad”. In modern translations of the Bible, it wouldn’t do to have God described that way. So “awesome” stepped in.

But around the same time, a different change was happening to “awesome”. It was defined in 1980 in the “Official Preppy Handbook”, a bestselling semi-satirical look at well-heeled American youth: “Awesome: terrific, great.” It had a bit of California surfer-dude and Valley Girl, too. By 1982, the Guardian was mocking the West Coast with “It’s so awesome, I mean, fer shurr, toadly, toe-dully!”

Soon the word needed no definition. “Awesome” became the default descriptor for anything good. In 1982, I was seven and I swallowed it whole. It stayed with me for decades. In 2005, I remember meeting a girl when I had just seen “Batman Begins”, the moody psychological picture that reinvigorated a tired franchise. “It’s awesome,” I told her. “Awesome. Just awesome.” She wondered, she later said, what kind of journalist had just one adjective in his vocabulary. Somehow, she married me all the same.

“Awesome” has been with my generation in America so long that it now has a whiff of retro. There is a Tumblr blog entitled “My Parents Were Awesome”, which features pictures, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, of the writers’ parents looking young and cool. It generated a spin-off book that included nostalgic essays by some of the children. And “awesome” caught on not only with my age group, but with anyone young enough to be considered young or youngish when “awesome” became awesome. Barack Obama, a college student in Los Angeles when the “Official Preppy Handbook” came out, turned it into a joke on the campaign trail in 2008. When asked what was his biggest weakness, he would say: “It’s possible I’m a little too awesome.”

Britons have a love-hate relationship with linguistic innovations from America. In 2008 a Daily Telegraph correspondent, Toby Harnden, devoted a blog post to the “Top 10 Most Annoying Americanisms”, something that would scarcely occur to an American columnist to do with Britishisms. But he didn’t include “awesome”. And well he might not, because it now looms as large in Britain as it once did in America. It has even grabbed a chunk of market share from the great British word for “great”—“brilliant”. The Guardian, the paper that mocked “awesome” in 1982, had used it in 6,457 articles by July 2011, with one or two being added each day. It is no longer just God or jaw-dropping natural wonders: a catch by a cricketer, a mashed-potato dish and savings in a council budget have all gone down as “awesome”.

In June the Guardian asked writers to name worn-out phrases, and Sampurna Chattarji chose “awesome”, noting that it had made it to India (“with an American accent”), while scorning it as meaningless. She’s right, but words are shifting—together, as part of a system—all the time. “Terrible” begins to mean “bad”, so “awesome” must replace “terrible”. Then “awesome” becomes “excellent”, so “awe-inspiring” has to fill the space left behind. Then teenagers hear their parents saying “awesome”, and it becomes the last thing they want to say. So new words are roped in: “sick” meaning “great” is big in America, while in Britain “safe” shows signs of becoming the new “awesome”. If you have kids and want them to stop using either of these words, just adopt it yourself.

Robert Lane Greene is a business correspondent for The Economist, and author of "You Are What You Speak". Here he explains why it's okay to split an infinitive.

Picture credit: Lara604 (via Flickr)

IDEAS ROBERT LANE GREENE LANGUAGE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011

In Time of Scrimping, Fun Stuff Is Still Selling

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and ANDREW MARTIN

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With a flat job market and an economy that will not improve, Americans are once again buckling down and cutting back.

At least on the things that they can resist.

Consumers at all income levels have been splurging on indulgences while paring many humdrum household expenses, according to industry data for the last year. Many retailers also report that while fripperies like purses and perfumes are best sellers, they cannot get shoppers interested in basics like diapers, socks and vacuum bags.

“My birthday is coming up, so I’m treating myself,” said Ragan Belton, a social worker leaving the Macy’s in Manhattan with newly styled hair and a pair of shoes.

Consumer psychologists say that in this uncertain economy — coming after one of the worst recessions in generations — it is just too hard being good all the time.

“People have a limited supply of energy to put toward controlling their urges,” Kathleen D. Vohs, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, said in an e-mail. Ms. Vohs studies spending behavior at the university’s Carlson School of Management.

Many of the products selling briskly are not high-priced, but they could be on a party supply list: premixed cocktails and coolers, cheesecake, cosmetics and wine. Meanwhile, sales of staples like batteries, bleach and fertilizer have declined sharply.

The pattern has shifted since the recession, when shoppers stocked up on basics but consumer spending and overall retail sales plummeted. Now, despite persistent consumer pessimism, spending is holding up, retailers have posted consistent profits and some companies that make the fun stuff are reporting especially strong results.

The cosmetics maker Estée Lauder, for example, announced last month that it had recorded its strongest fiscal year in North America in a decade, and a competitor, L’Oréal, said its first-half net profit was up 12 percent from a year ago. Last week, a crush of shoppers hoping to buy a cheaper line of Missoni fashions at Target brought down the retailer’s Web site for the better part of a day.

“When the crisis hit and people really started to feel a pinch in their pocketbooks, they started to spend less across the board, especially in discretionary kinds of things,” said Vicki G. Morwitz, a professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “But it’s difficult, I think, for people to do that for a long time, even when they need to.”

Economists say the spending does not translate into a broader shift in consumer confidence, nor does it point to an economic revival. In the long run, basics are the bread and butter of retailing, and when they slump, the industry as a whole eventually feels the pinch. Also, some analysts say, many shoppers remain price-conscious, even about their indulgences. That means they tend to gravitate toward cheaper imports, which might help on the retail employment front but does not create manufacturing jobs domestically.

“The toughest businesses, frankly, have been in the middle of the basics assortments,” Myron E. Ullman III, chairman and chief executive of J. C. Penney, told investors last month, referring to clothing staples. In the company’s second quarter, shoes, handbags and jewelry were top sellers.
At Kohl’s, similar categories — watches, handbags and women’s shoes — were among the strong sellers in the second quarter.

“The psychology of the customer is you can — I hate to sound too esoteric here — but you can improve your outfit or dress up your outfit without buying a new outfit by buying a new handbag,” said Kevin Mansell, chief executive of Kohl’s. “It makes people feel better.”

Unit sales of premade cocktails and coolers, which declined in the first two years of the recession, have jumped 24 percent in the last year. A similar pattern holds with many other indulgent items, which dropped in sales when the recession hit. In the last year, though, sales of body scrubbers jumped 21 percent, cosmetic accessories rose 22 percent and nail polish rose 10 percent. Refrigerated baked goods were up 16 percent, and wine 6 percent. The figures come from SymphonyIRI Group, a market research firm in Chicago, that tracked sales at most major stores, excluding Wal-Mart, for the 52 weeks ending July 10.

“In a poor economy, at any given moment people are more likely to have problems with self-control than otherwise — because there’s only so far their self-control energy can be stretched,” said Ms. Vohs, the professor of marketing.

Some of the products that declined are associated with household chores. Fertilizer and weed killer dropped 19 percent, as did vacuum bags. Thermometers declined by 20 percent, and flashlights and batteries by 10 percent. Diapers, bleach, shoe polish, car wax and socks are also on a downward trajectory, the data shows. Of course, not all products fit neatly into these trends. Experts are still pondering the run on meat pies, the sales of which jumped 15 percent.
People interviewed about their shopping practices sounded as if they had grown tired of budgeting. Ms. Belton, the shopper at Macy’s, said that she had curtailed spending as her hours and pay decreased, but that she needed a break from the austerity. “This was one of the first times shopping in six months,” she said.

Outside a Sephora store in Times Square, Angela Spencer, 50, said, “I may not buy as much, but I accessorize more.” She splurges, she said, “only if I really got to have it.”

One thriving category in the treat-yourself economy has been cheesecake, with sales rising 22 percent in the last year, according to the SymphonyIRI data.

At Junior’s Cheesecake, a Brooklyn-based restaurant and cheesecake store, a co-founder, Alan Rosen, said sales at the 61-year-old company were increasing again after dropping for the first time ever during the recession.

“People want to get back to living — it’s become a more adjusted normal,” he said.

Experiment No. 1 - Skateboard Shades

Source: http://vimeo.com/26124634

Experiment No. 1 - Skateboard Shades from Shwood Eyewear on Vimeo.

Follow Shwood's own Eric Singer as he meets up with Keith Hufnagel and others to claim the streets of LA in pursuit of Shwood's latest experiment, sunglasses made from broken skateboard decks. Crafted entirely in Shwood's local woodshop, this one-of-a-kind pair of sunglasses was created out of curiosity, just to see what was possible. For more of Shwood's experiments visit: ExperimentWithNature.com

Based in Portland, Oregon Shwood creates handcrafted wooden eyewear using fine exotic hardwoods.
Shwood’s in-house manufacturing process merges precision technology with classic skilled craftsmanship to create a timeless art form. Every step from veneering and precision lens cutting, to shaping and finishing is conducted in our own Portland-based workshop to promise an entirely handcrafted eyewear piece. View the collection at shwoodshop.com


Thanks to Keith and the crew at HUF. hufsf.com

Filmed and Edited by Joe Stevens. joestevensmedia.com

Music:
T.Rex "Mambo Sun"
The Black Keys "240 Years Before Your Time"

Hyper Island project: Karmatech concept film

A concept done at Hyper Island connecting the online and offline worlds using RFID enabled shoes and E-ink interactive mats.

Hyper Island project: Karmatech concept film from Pier Madonia on Vimeo.

The WeSC social shoe concept was developed at Hyper Island, Stockholm, by creativesKris Bengtson, Pier Madonia, Hampus Lemhag, Mikael Naslund, Anna Anderson and Bodil Gustavsson Fürst, with mentoring from Thomas Larsson at B-Reel.

Agritourism blooms

Valley farms are taking part in a booming business in California.

Posted at 11:00 PM on Sunday, May. 15, 2011

By Robert Rodriguez / The Fresno Bee

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Thousands of people come to the Valley every year to tour the national parks and Yosemite -- and Dinuba farmer Mike Naylor hopes a few will stop at his place.

Naylor can't offer the majesty of ancient granite cliffs, but his setting has its own homespun charm: Visitors can stay at his 95-acre tree fruit farm.

"And they don't just stay at our farm -- they stay in our house," said Nori Naylor, Mike's wife. "It doesn't get more real than that."

The Naylors have joined a trend called agritourism. And its growing.

The federal government's 2007 Census of Agriculture found that 685 California farms were involved in some form of agritourism. Now, there are easily more than 1,000, according to University of California researchers who have created a database to track the trend.

The UC researchers also launched the first study of the trend in California. Last month, they announced the results: Nearly two-thirds of California agritourism operators planned to expand or diversify over the next five years. Now the researchers are watching for more growth.

"There is no question that there is a lot of potential for growth, and we are seeing it happen," said Shermain Hardesty, director of UC's Small Farm Program.

In agritourism, growers have found a way to tap into a broader consumer phenomenon. Increasingly, people want to know where their food comes from, and that has become obvious in their buying choices. For example, more people are buying organic products: U.S. sales of organic food and beverages grew from $1 billion in 1990 to $24.8 billion in 2009.

And, anecdotally, growers say they are seeing more people shopping at farmers markets and touring working farms.

Agritourism also has the potential to reach more local consumers. People like Fresno mom Minal Patel enjoy trudging around a field harvesting strawberries, cherries and grapes. She believes it's an important part of eating healthy.

"I also want my 3-year-old to understand where we get our fruit from and how it is grown," Patel said.

Farmers realize the potential this new consumer base represents. The UC's agritourism study showed that nearly 30% of the farmers offering agritourism events supplemented their regular farm income by $50,000 or more in 2008.

"We know from all the consumer trends that people are willing to pay for an authentic experience and for specialty foods," said Ellie Rilla, community development adviser for UC Cooperative Extension in Marin County. "And agritourism provides that."

For Hanford farmer John Olivas, reaching out to the public has meant survival for this three-acre berry farm. Selling directly to consumers means bigger profits.

Olivas grows several types of berries, including blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and tayberry. Tayberry is a cross between a blackberry and raspberry.

Along with letting people pick their own fruit, he also operates a fruit stand and sells at farmers markets. His Rancho Notso Grande draws hundreds of visitors from the Valley and from the Bay Area and Southern California.

"Right now, I am getting about 20 calls a day from people wanting to know if the berries are ready for picking," Olivas said.

"In this business you have to find access to markets and get to the people who are looking for premium, quality produce. And you have to provide them with an experience. You really have to have the whole mix to survive."

The Naylors also know the value of agritourism, despite some good-natured ribbing from their neighbors.

In February, they remodeled their ranch-style home and created a bed-and-breakfast type of venue. Since opening, they have welcomed about 20 guests, who paid between $129 to $179 a night.

The visitors have come from New Mexico, Florida and Southern California.

"I know some of my neighbors thought I was nuts for doing something like this, but it works," said Mike Naylor. "Now they are saying that when they have buyers come into town, they are going to park them over here."

In southwest Fresno, Mike Smith also hopes to cash in. This summer, he will allow people to pick their own flowers, lavender and produce on his 40-acre organic farm. And in the fall, he will open the pumpkin patch for the public and school tours.

"For us, the ultimate goal is to have the entire ranch open to the public," said Smith, a longtime family farmer who has been producing mixed vegetables for years and has sold produce to wholesalers.

Small Businesses Snub Couponing

By Cindy Vanegas

Published May 02, 2011

FOXBusiness

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Entrepreneurs’ willingness to jump on the couponing bandwagon has fueled tremendous growth for daily-deal companies like Groupon and Living Social. The contagion has even spread to non-traditional couponing businesses like The New York Times and Facebook. While it may seem like every local business is out to entice customers through daily deals, there are some entrepreneurs taking a stand against couponing.

“The sales spike from couponing is like a one-night stand,” said Hans Hess, founder of Elevation Burger. "You get something really quick and it’s enjoyable for a little while, but it doesn’t give you the basis for a long-term relationship."

Hess didn’t like the idea of couponing, but when franchisees approached him about offering a coupon through a daily deal site he allowed them to test the concept at five locations over a number of months.

“We tried it and realized it was not a way to build relationships with guests,” recalled Hess, “Our theory is that the kind of person buying the coupon is just looking for a deal and they are content just going deal to deal to deal.”

Hess allows new franchisees looking to draw a crowd to offer one daily deal. But they can’t repeat it and it must be done within the first two months of business.

Tom Kelley, managing partner at Concept Branding Group, warned that couponing can cheapen a brand in consumers’ eyes. “We discourage clients from doing it,” said Kelley, “There are more efficient ways to market than shotgun couponing.” He suggests businesses try building community alliances and working with community organizations to help attract customers.

Consumer psychology toward couponing can also impact price perception. Marketing consultant Michael Zipursky said coupons can be dangerous because people will associate the business with the discounted price. “Say you offer a product or service for $50 that is usually $100, people will perceive the value of that product or service at the lower price.”

An expectation of discounting among coupon-addicted consumers can also have a negative effect on consumers. Stephen Hinkis, vice president of franchise operations at Newk’s Express Café (Newkscafe.com), was approach by several daily coupon sites and turned them down. “The problem with couponing from our experience is you can’t wane your customers off of couponing and if you remove the coupon you have to do damage control,” Hinkis said.

The boom in customers a deal creates could put entrepreneurs at risk of losing future customers after the deal is over. Pierre Panos, founder of Fresh to Order, warned that most business owners get slammed when the coupon takes effect.

“They don’t know how to handle the volume and they lose far more than they would have gained,” said Panos, “If the experience is bad, because they did not execute it well, then the customer will tell potential full-paying guests not to go there.”

For entrepreneurs willing to bite the coupon bullet, Zipursky recommended they “think about the effect that the coupon will have on the business, how much a customer is worth and how much they are willing to spend to get that customer?”