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Mindful consumption: a customer-centric approach to sustainability

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Abstract

How effectively business deals with the challenges of sustainability will define its success for decades to come. Current sustainability strategies have three major deficiencies: they do not directly focus on the customer, they do not recognize the looming threats from rising global over-consumption, and they do not take a holistic approach. We present a framework for a customer-centric approach to sustainability. This approach recasts the sustainability metric to emphasize the outcomes of business actions measured holistically in term of environmental, personal and economic well-being of the consumer. We introduce the concept of mindful consumption (MC) as the guiding principle in this approach. MC is premised on a consumer mindset of caring for self, for community, and for nature, that translates behaviorally into tempering the self-defeating excesses associated with acquisitive, repetitive and aspirational consumption. We also make the business case for fostering mindful consumption, and illustrate how the marketing function can be harnessed to successfully implement the customer-centric approach to sustainability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, 1300 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Jagdish N. Sheth

  2. Professors of Management and Human Resources, College of Business Administration, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Avenue, Pomona, CA, 91768, USA

    Nirmal K. Sethia & Shanthi Srinivas

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  1. Jagdish N. Sheth
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  2. Nirmal K. Sethia
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  3. Shanthi Srinivas
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Correspondence to Nirmal K. Sethia.

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Sheth, J.N., Sethia, N.K. & Srinivas, S. Mindful consumption: a customer-centric approach to sustainability. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 39, 21–39 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0216-3

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