Branding sustainability : opportunity and risk behind a brand-based approach to sustainable markets

ephemera works with a Creative Commons Licence, which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work, so long as the work is attributed to the author(s). It allows non-commercial use of the work, but it does not allow others to alter, transform or build upon the work. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/In this article we discuss the role of brands in the creation of sustainable markets. We focus on the the increasing importance of ethical branding and how it might help to overcome some institutional shortcomings inherent in current marketing settings. We also discuss the increasing influence of brand communities and the seeming potential for a 'democratisation' of brand value and values. Brands are in this article described as one practical and effective way forward to develop the market for sustainable products further. We illustrate this from examples in food retailing, showing how companies have already started to follow this logic.At the same time this article raises doubts over the long-term effectiveness of a (purely) brand-focused approach to sustainable market exchange. On the one hand we claim that brands have proven receptive to public top-down (ie policy makers) and bottom-up (ie social movements)pressure. For intensive public scrutiny has resulted in markets developing in line with public interests. Yet, on the other hand, we raise concerns over brands' increasing dominance. Dominance, that is, over the exchange process of sustainable products and services; also over the societal discourse in which sustainability is continuously made sense of. We conclude with an attempt to provide a more nuanced view on brands. We acknowledge their effectiveness in 'bringing sustainable products to life', but also stress the risk of brands achieving discursive dominance over the (democratically legitimized) public debate. For this undermines societal efforts to 'green' marketsPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Hindrances local organic farmers are facing in the Turkish organic agricultural sector

Today, organic agriculture is considered a viable option to close the gap between commonly practiced agriculture and the goal of an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable agriculture. During the last 25 years, Turkey saw a first wave of conversion to organic farming practices, mainly spurred by demand from export markets. Due to exceptional natural conditions, foreign companies settled in the country to establish and supervise production for their home-markets in Europe, America or Japan. This thesis is aiming for clarity about the hindrances farmers may face on their way from conventional to organic farming in Turkey. In order to gain a thorough picture of the situation for farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in the Turkish organic sector, they were interviewed or asked to complete a questionnaire concerning their view on problems of-, and possible solutions for the organic farmers’ situation. The results of this research show a lack of coordination and trust among stakeholders. The top-down led organic sector is dominated by foreign production- and certification companies. Even though the Turkish Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Affairs is widely respected for its commitment to organic agriculture, the ministry’s expertise is put into doubt. Thereby a strong and clear leader for the development of the sector is difficult to pin-point for most actors. Unisonous, the development of the market (both export and domestic) is considered most important, ranked higher than additional governmental support. In respect to these findings, this thesis finishes with the conclusion that there is an urgent need for a more active grass-root movement. Such, it is reasoned, will help to move the spotlight of focus on the farmers’ situation. More than financial support, farmers need functioning support structures to guide them through the challenging conversion period and help with knowledge gathering and marketing

Sustainability in Store

Retailers across Western Europe are faced with the challenge to integrate the idea of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) into their operations. The difficulty hierin lies in the the lack of any clear understanding or agreement for what the term implies for retailers and how to implement it in retailers’ daily operations. Instead, retailers need to handle a number of different – at times competing – understandings of SCP among their stakeholders and combine these into a strategy that fits their business interests. In this thesis, I study the interaction between retailers, their stakeholders and market demand to understand how the complexity of the sustainability discourse is translated into concrete action on the shop floor. My results show retailers to be highly flexible in their work with SCP, however also quite unstrategic. Much of retailers’ efforts to integrate SCP into their operations is based on a trial-and-error process with frequent mistakes and change of direction. To approach SCP more strategically more attention must be paid to the sensemaking process of SCP among stakeholders and how it connects to market demand. My research found that rather than focusing on the overall sustainability of products and services, retailers ought to comparmentalize SCP to match specific stakeholder groups in a meaningful way. Retail brands have emerged as particularly useful tool in this respect. Due to the property rights assigned to such brands, they offer the retailer the ability to actively enage with SCP and adapt its meaning to stakeholder expectations. However, sensemaking of SCP is also to a great extent a local process, removed from the national discourse. While brands are well-suited to engage with the macro-discourse, they are not sufficiently able to adapt to the micro-level discourse. My research points to the important role individual stores have in the adaptation process of SCP to the micro-level discourse. Several examples of successful micro-adaptation to local sensemaking of SCP at the store level could be observed in my research. Successful integration of SCP into a retailer’s operation therefore seems to depend on a functioning multi-layer process within the organisation, where both headquarters and stores contribute their strengthes to a functioning internal translation procees of SCP, from global discourse to local enaction. These results have particular relevance for centralized retail organisations. They imply more responsibility for stores in the sensemaking and operationalisation of SCP as a way to achieve a more contextually meaningful approach to SCP

From sufficiency to sustainable abundance: disspelling a myth

The Paris Agreement sets the goal of a complete global phase-out of fossil fuel use by the end of the 21st century and an 80-95% reduction of carbon emissions in affluent countries by 2050. Obviously, efficiency gains alone cannot deliver the required reductions (Alfredsson et al. 2018), due to rebound effects (York, Adua, and Clark 2022) and the increasing pace of growth (Hickel 2020). It is suggested that efficiency improvements must be accompanied by demand-side innovations and, more specifically, by sufficiency-oriented efforts, i.e., “doing with less” - reducing the absolute amounts of resources and emissions associated with modern lifestyles (Wiedmann et al. 2020). Sufficiency encourages individuals and societies to make conscious choices about what they consume, focusing on quality rather than quantity and seeking fulfilment and well-being beyond material possessions. However, discourses about limits to consumption are often met with resistance from almost all stakeholders (Gumbert et al. 2022). Individuals associate sufficiency with “living in caves” (Mont et al. 2013). For businesses, sufficiency often challenges the entire business logic of growth and profit maximisation (Bocken and Short 2016). Policymakers are reluctant to engage with sufficiency for fear of losing their electorates, as sufficiency is often viewed as a too radical and contested idea. Thus, a paradox emerges: international agreements have finally agreed upon the need for a radical transformation of our economy, yet necessary measures for enabling radical transformations are seen as too radical. These views and narratives help maintain the growth-dependent economy that no longer fits within planetary boundaries and influence what our societies deem possible and desirable (T. Jackson 2006). The question we explore in this contribution is: How can we dispel these dominant societal narratives that prevent us from considering sufficiency as a salient part of sustainability governance? How have policymakers and businesses operationalised and practised the contested notion of sufficiency

Nudging, a tool for sustainable behaviour?

This study was conducted as part of a government commission which wasgiven to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Swedish EPA) in 2014.The Environmental Protection Agency mandated the International Institutefor Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University to conducta research study on nudging. The study has served and will serve as a directinput to further strategic work on sustainable consumption policies.The aim of the report is to synthesize existing knowledge about the effectsachievable with nudging on consumption and the environment, in what areasnudging according to research can have the best effect and how nudging shouldbe applied to give the best effect. The study comprised a literature review andinterviews to collect experiences of working with nudging available in somecountries

Multi-flow Optimization via Horizontal Message Queue Partitioning

Integration flows are increasingly used to specify and execute data-intensive integration tasks between heterogeneous systems and applications. There are many different application areas such as near real-time ETL and data synchronization between operational systems. For the reasons of an increasing amount of data, highly distributed IT infrastructures, as well as high requirements for up-to-dateness of analytical query results and data consistency, many instances of integration flows are executed over time. Due to this high load, the performance of the central integration platform is crucial for an IT infrastructure. With the aim of throughput maximization, we propose the concept of multi-flow optimization (MFO). In this approach, messages are collected during a waiting time and executed in batches to optimize sequences of plan instances of a single integration flow. We introduce a horizontal (value-based) partitioning approach for message batch creation and show how to compute the optimal waiting time. This approach significantly reduces the total execution time of a message sequence and hence, it maximizes the throughput, while accepting moderate latency time

Hindrances local organic farmers are facing in the Turkish organic agricultural sector : an attempt to identify barriers and suggest ways to eliminate them

Today, organic agriculture is considered a viable option to close the gap between commonly practiced agriculture and the goal of an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable agriculture. During the last 25 years, Turkey saw a first wave of conversion to organic farming practices, mainly spurred by demand from export markets. Due to exceptional natural conditions, foreign companies settled in the country to establish and supervise production for their home-markets in Europe, America or Japan. This thesis is aiming for clarity about the hindrances farmers may face on their way from conventional to organic farming in Turkey. In order to gain a thorough picture of the situation for farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in the Turkish organic sector, they were interviewed or asked to complete a questionnaire concerning their view on problems of-, and possible solutions for the organic farmers’ situation. The results of this research show a lack of coordination and trust among stakeholders. The top-down led organic sector is dominated by foreign production- and certification companies. Even though the Turkish Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Affairs is widely respected for its commitment to organic agriculture, the ministry’s expertise is put into doubt. Thereby a strong and clear leader for the development of the sector is difficult to pin-point for most actors. Unisonous, the development of the market (both export and domestic) is considered most important, ranked higher than additional governmental support. In respect to these findings, this thesis finishes with the conclusion that there is an urgent need for a more active grass-root movement. Such, it is reasoned, will help to move the spotlight of focus on the farmers’ situation. More than financial support, farmers need functioning support structures to guide them through the challenging conversion period and help with knowledge gathering and marketing

Potential Rebound Effects of 1.5° Lifestyles

Understanding how lifestyles should and could change to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement is the aim of the project ‘EU 1.5° Lifestyles’. It focuses on lifestyle options compatible with a 1.5°C target and explores the structural barriers and enablers to implementing these. Many of these lifestyle options relate to circular strategies such as sharing, reusing and repairing products.However, even if lifestyle changes are achieved, there is a risk of rebound and negative side effects that can undermine the intended outcomes. While rebound effects have been studied, particularly regarding energy and economic mechanisms, less attention was paid to other environmental effects and social mechanisms. A systematic literature review was conducted for rebound effects of sustainable lifestyles more generally and more specifically in the consumption domains: nutrition,housing, mobility, and leisure. This contribution maps the potential rebound effects of lifestyle changes and the different mechanisms by which these effects occur. It gives an overview of the literature on rebound effects related to sustainable lifestyle strategies for households. The results indicate some domain areas are more studied than others, but also a gap in understanding rebound effects empirically and holistically