Browsing by Subject "consumer behavior"
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(2020)Earth’s overshoot day marks the date when humanity’s ecological footprint exceeds Earth’s biocapacity for the year. As the day fell on earlier every year it shows that our current consumption pattern is unsustainable. One of the main human sources of greenhouse gas emissions is related to household consumption and thus companies play an important role in developing consumption practices more sustainable for consumers as they are the main providers of products and services. This research examines the ways three Finnish companies guide consumers towards environmentally sustainable choices as well as drivers and barriers related to consumer guidance. The objective is to enlighten companies’ consumer guiding methods as part of corporate responsibility and understand which factors encourage and hinder companies to guide consumers. The research was conducted as a qualitative multiple-case study. The case companies were Valio, S Group’s grocery stores and Fazer. The research data was collected via companies’ sustainability reports and focused semi-structured interviews by interviewing the case companies’ employees working with corporate responsibility, environmental management and communication. The data was analyzed by data-driven content analysis. The findings show that the case companies use guiding methods to steer consumers to environmentally sustainable choices: information provision, choice editing, nudging and financial incentives. The current trends related to sustainability and responsibility as well as a potential competitive advantage, the protection of brand image, the benefits of a forerunner, and a corporate strategy in which sustainability is an integral part encourage companies to guide consumers. Whereas, the principle of consumers’ freedom of choice, the responsibility of a big operator as well as risks related to the development of innovations and being a forerunner cause tensions in consumer guidance. The results confirm that various tensions are related to guiding consumers towards sustainability. Especially, the concept of consumers’ freedom of choice is firmly embedded in the mindset of business. Therefore, future research could examine the ways to bring these tensions and underlying contradictions more strongly into the public discussion to find solutions to promote sustainable consumption for consumers among companies.
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(2019)On a global scale the amount of meals consumed outside home setting continues to increase, which means that food service sector has a significant role in reaching global sustainability goals. Finland has a long tradition of public food services and a significant part of Finnish people enjoy a government-subsidized daily lunch. As a student restaurant UniCafe participates in Kela-funded meal scheme, thus UniCafe’s meals follow Finnish Nutrition Recommendations’ nutritional criteria for meals. This research examines the ways UniCafe guides its customers to making environmentally sustainable choices in their restaurants. This thesis also reviews UniCafe’s environmental sustainability measures, most significant of which are offering sustainable meal options, sourcing responsible ingredients and products, proper waste sorting and reducing food waste. This research also dwells in to the reasons behind these environmental measures and examines UniCafe as a forerunner company in the food service sector. The level of acceptability of different customer guidance ways are also evaluated on a general level and within UniCafe clientele. This research was conducted via qualitative case study research approach. The data for this research was col-lected via semi-structured theme interviews by interviewing UniCafe and Ylva restaurant and support services staff. Additionally, primary research data also comprised of Ylva’s online publications on responsibility and business operations. The data was analyzed by qualitative theory-guiding content analysis. According to the results, UniCafe is a forerunner company due to its unique customer and ownership base. UniCafe is expected to take environmental sustainability into account in their daily operations and selections. Five different customer guidance ways used by UniCafe were identified in this research: forced choice re-striction, choice editing, nudging, financial incentives and informational strategies. Most UniCafe customers accept the use of these different customer guidance methods but UniCafe perceives forced choice restriction as problematic, particularly on campuses that do not have many UniCafe restaurants. The results show that UniCafe guides its customers in many ways to promote environmental sustainability of their operations and their customers. In addition, the results confirm that methods such as informational strat-egies are perceived as more acceptable but simultaneously less effective than methods that restrict freedom of choice. In general, UniCafe customers approve environmental sustainability measures and customer guidance. On the other hand, UniCafe’s unique position in the student lunch market in Helsinki metropole area means that the results of this research cannot be generalized to apply to other food service sector operators.
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