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Sustainability is a megatrend and has been a topic of great interest for decades. Even though, industrialization came forth with genius and profitable businesses it almost never took into consideration the value of natural capital and sustainability. According to a 2017 report by the UN, there are more than 51 trillion microplastic particles in the sea, more than 500 times the number of stars in the Milky Way. With the depletion of natural resources, increasing consumer education and the need for a better future the world has been prompted to take solid steps to control the menace that could be climate change and unsustainability. This paper makes an effort to understand the effect that sustainable marketing practices have on the profitability of an organization. The case studies of the three famous athleisure brands provides an insight into how sustainability can help companies drive towards a profitable and a circular future.
Sustainability first caught greater attention when the Brundtland commission first published their report “Our Common Future”. Since then, a lot has been done to fight against climate change. Sustainability has become one major issue in the daily business of companies. One industry that is surely going to change as a cause of the increased awareness of sustainability issues is the automotive industry. The disruptive electrification push plays an important role in the fast changing industry. E- mobility solutions as a means for more sustainable mobility are demanded more and more by customers. Also, governments shape the change in the industry with new regulations, bonus payments for buying electric cars and their emission targets. All this might sooner or later push traditional combustion engine cars out of the market. New players like Tesla focusing only on electric vehicles are entering the market and traditional car companies are changing their business towards e-mobility as well. That this change works well, companies also will need a well-developed marketing as well as brand positioning strategy and this is where the concept of green marketing kicks in. Broadly spoken, green marketing is the marketing of products that minimize the negative effects on our environment. Therefore, the thesis is generally researching the details of literature on green marketing and brand positioning. Later on, a detailed transition to the automotive industry is made with the analyzing of the three companies Volkswagen, BMW and Tesla. The thesis works out how those three companies managed to transfer their marketing mix into a green one and how this then affected their brand positioning. The thesis discusses the findings critically and gives implications for theory and practice as well as a guide to what needs to be done to be recognized as a green player in the automotive industry.
The relation between Frugal Innovation and Sustainability is a widely discussed topic in current academic literature. To assess the correlation between these two concepts, a sample of the most frequently mentioned Frugal Innovations was selected. The criteria to evaluate the sustainability potential for each of these cases was built upon the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a global reference indicator. Frugal Innovations among the banking, transport, energy, ICT, water, appliances and healthcare sectors were evaluated. The results suggested a positive contribution and impact of Frugal Innovations towards economic, social and environmental development.