[MUSIC] Hi. My name is Matthias. In this video, I will talk about sustainable consumption. More specifically, I will look at how individual consumers behave in the grocery store. This includes questions such as, how do consumers make choices? And how can these choices be influenced to become more sustainable? You might have noticed that sustainability has entered the supermarket isle. Most retailers in Western Europe, North America and really the whole world have started to work with sustainable consumption in one way or another. In many countries, for example, various labels have been introduced into the market to make it easier for consumers to choose sustainable options. These labels often come with a price premium because they increase production costs and require additional logistical efforts. The market is therefore dependant on consumers' willingness to pay a premium for such food labels. Otherwise there's little economic incentives for producers, distributors, and retailers to offer and promote these products. The main problems for retailers in the entire food industry is that consumers have proven to be less willing to pay for sustainability than what surveys would have suggested. While many surveys point to a high concern for sustainability among consumers, in reality it has proven difficult for retailers to convince the majority of consumers to pay extra for sustainable product credentials. This discrepancy between attitude and behavior is called the 'attitude behavior gap', and it describes the observation that consumers say one thing when they're asked what they value in food consumption but act differently in the grocery store. This is because in a survey, consumers can respond fully in line with their values, but in the store the same consumer is faced with various trade offs. Questions such as, how much more expensive can an organic apple be before it is too expensive? Or, should I go to another store because this store is out of locally grown tomatoes?, are constantly facing the consumer trying to consume sustainably. What is more, most consumers have a limit to how much energy they want to put into such decisions. As a matter of fact, grocery shopping is to a large degree habitual and therefore following routines. Just ask yourself how much of your grocery shopping is based on conscious decision-making, and how much is a quick routinized act based on past behavior. This poses a challenge to businesses and organizations working with sustainability. Many of them have realized how difficult it is to change consumption behavior by only trying to inform and convince the individual consumer. They have therefore started to adapt their work accordingly. One interesting example is the WWF, the World Wildlife Fund. They have long tried to convince consumers to only buy sustainable fish. They have introduced the street light system for fish species in which they rank species in red, yellow and green. Red fish should not be consumed at all. Yellow fish only under certain circumstances, while green fish is fine. The WWF realizes how difficult it is for them to influence enough consumers to adopt these guidelines in their shopping directly. Therefore the WWF also works with retailers in order to change consumer behavior. In Sweden, the WWF has managed to convince all major retailers to only sell green and yellow listed fish. And so consumers have to make a real effort to find a store that sells a red-listed fish. Most consumers will not bother to do that and instead go for the sustainable choice. This practice is called choice editing. Choice editing is practiced in many fields of consumption. In Sweden for example, chlorine (bleach) as a cleaning agent was choice edited away in supermarkets in the 1990s. Even toilet paper was choice edited. And these days, it is hard to find toilet paper that is not sustainably certified in Swedish supermarkets. However, consumers do not accept choice editing in all consumption aspects. Usually, consumers value choice, and it is therefore risky for supermarkets to restrict it. Another approach is, therefore, to encourage some choices and discourage other choices. This is called nudging. Nudging is a term that has been used to describe actions to influence the behaviour of individuals without deploying legal or economic measures. That means the choice and prices remain uninfluenced. Instead, one focuses on consumer psychology to influence behavior. An obvious and well known way to do this, is through the design of stores. Where in the store a product is placed makes a huge difference for consumer choice. The best places in the store are at eye height and along the consumer's path through the store. The amount of shelf space that is given to a product category is of course, also of great importance. Greater shelf space for labelled products increases the chances that consumers choose sustainably certified products. Of course, one can influence consumers also through in-store advertising. By advertising sustainability in the store, a retailer increases the likelihood that consumers think of sustainability when they choose products. This is called priming. Priming means that certain values and preferences of the many values and preferences consumers have are reinforced in the store. So if retailers focus on price in their in-store marketing, customers are more likely to focus in price. If retailers focus on social and environmental messages on the other hand, consumers focus more on sustainability when shopping for their groceries. As you can see, sustainable consumption depends on many factors. Many of which are beyond the individual consumer's conscience. Where the markets will become more sustainable in the future depends partly on consumer preferences of course. Just as much, it depends on broader issues of market regulation and societal pressures on businesses to guide consumers in the right direction. Purchasing sustainable products in the store is a start. But engaging into societal debate and putting pressure on governments and businesses is just as important for those of us who want to make a difference. [MUSIC]
