Uncover how your model can meet the rising shopper demand for sustainability.
We stay in a world that’s now 1.5C hotter than throughout pre-industrial instances, with extreme climate occasions that end in profound human and monetary prices. The World Well being Group declares this burgeoning disaster “the one greatest well being menace dealing with humanity”.
Recognising the urgency of sustainable company motion not solely safeguards in opposition to provide chain disruptions and punitive laws but in addition unlocks a worthwhile enterprise technique pushed by rising shopper expectations and demand.
In response to this escalating menace, shoppers and companies alike are reevaluating their environmental and societal priorities and searching for sustainable options that profit well being, funds and humanity.
Shoppers – and shopper dealing with companies – are the issue and answer to sustainability
Experiences from the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC) reveal that family consumption accounts for 60-70% of world emissions, and that’s why we’ve performed the International Sustainability Report 2024-25 – overlaying 10 of the world’s most crucial economies, monitoring the spectrum of behaviours, attitudes and buying tendencies of 10,000 shoppers, and benchmarked in opposition to knowledge over a four-year interval.
Our aim? To equip you with the cutting-edge knowledge and knowledgeable insights wanted to tell your advertising and innovation methods and make your model extra resilient to the sustainability challenges forward.
For this 12 months’s Shopper Sustainability Examine, our analysts have taken a more in-depth have a look at the specifics of sustainability within the CPG trade. They supply an in-depth evaluation of sectors together with Meals & Drink, Magnificence & Private Care, and Family Care. This provides a deeper understanding of the best techniques methods that can make your model’s merchandise, providers, and insurance policies stand out.
Do shoppers care about sustainability?
The significance of sustainability to shoppers is changing into more and more obvious, as they really feel more and more engaged, threatened, but helpless. We discover that local weather change deniers are within the minority (at 28%), as 49% of individuals report changing into more and more uncovered to – and activated by – excessive climate occasions.
The rising shopper consciousness of sustainability and rising ranges of engagement is as a lot about schooling as it’s publicity. 4 in ten individuals surveyed attribute their elevated understanding of environmental points to eco-activism, resulting in a extra cynical view of company claims, particularly, carbon offsetting. Acutely aware consumerism is gaining traction, with over three-fifths of shoppers expressing that they’d choose for firms to cut back their very own carbon emissions as a substitute.
Key demographics participating in sustainable practices
Over 55s dedication to sustainable shopper behaviour
Our world main Shopper Sustainability Examine uncovers sudden findings and busts some myths alongside the best way. We discover that while younger shoppers aged 16-24 are almost definitely to have joined a local weather demonstration (10% have finished) and twice as more likely to be vegetarian (at 6%), their sustainability behaviours and perception techniques concerning local weather change are merely normal.
Apparently, shoppers aged over 55 exhibit the strongest ranges of motion and engagement in direction of sustainability. Two essential elements doubtless drive this development. Firstly, being older offers them a higher sense of perspective and secondly, their possession of great property (particularly properties and wealth), empowers them for such actions. They not solely imagine that their behaviours can positively influence the surroundings, but in addition take aligned motion with their values.
Girls’s attitudes in direction of sustainability
Our International Sustainability Report 2024-25 acknowledges conventional ideas like “Mom Nature” and explores gendered perceptions that usually depict sure teams as extra conscientious, and key family shoppers. The survey discovered that respondents who establish as girls present a higher consciousness of sustainability points and are six proportion factors much less more likely to deny local weather change in comparison with those that establish as males. They’re additionally extra doubtless by 5 factors to imagine that their nation is affected by local weather change and 4 factors extra more likely to imagine they will make a constructive distinction by way of sustainable behaviours.
This heightened consciousness could also be linked to larger engagement in sustainability actions, comparable to recycling the place they lead by seven factors, and power conservation throughout cooking, the place they rating a further five-point lead. Moreover, their acutely aware consumerism manifests of their eating regimen, as they’re 4 factors much less more likely to devour meat frequently.
Acutely aware consumerism and evolving buying behaviours
Evolving buying habits mirror the emergence of a extra resource-conscious shopper – one who’s more and more involved by meals and water shortages and is searching for sustainable options that ship each effectivity and worth. This shift in direction of extra acutely aware consumerism is seeing shoppers embrace buying and way of life behaviours that cut back each consumption and waste, while maximising assets.
Regardless of sluggish charges of dietary behaviour change (vegetarians and vegans signify a static 5% of us), organics and meat/dairy alternate options have mainstreamed as fixtures in our weekly grocery baskets. Moreover, our world examine’s knowledge helps trade narratives across the escalating transition in direction of cleaner power sources for properties and transport. As of 2024, over one-third of our analysis individuals are sourcing their power from renewable assets, with a noticeable improve within the adoption of residence photo voltaic and warmth pumps. An analogous upward curve is seen in electrical automobile (EV) adoption, demonstrated in our monitoring knowledge with hybrid and full EV possession and leasing on the rise, diminishing the maintain of typical petrol/diesel automobiles.
10,000 shoppers. 10 markets. Insights on shopper sentiment.
Obtain the manager abstract at the moment.
Tips for manufacturers to strategically place merchandise with decrease influence and higher duty
In 2024, our analysis reveals a decline within the proportion of shoppers who imagine that their “behaviour could make a constructive distinction to the surroundings”, right down to 47% from 51% in 2021. In the identical interval, our insights have additionally seen sustainability elements like recyclable packaging and accountable sourcing have gotten much less vital in shoppers’ buying choices. Whereas there continues to be rising mistrust of firms’ sustainable claims, this creates three key challenges that manufacturers should tackle when positioning their much less impactful and extra accountable merchandise and insurance policies:
Overcome shoppers’ diminished sense of influence
Reply to rising mistrust of company claims and insurance policies
Acknowledge how shoppers have deprioritised sustainability in buying concerns
Our sustainability analysis sheds gentle on areas the place shoppers do – and don’t – see the constructive influence from their behaviours and that of manufacturers. When surveyed, nearly two in 5 engaged Magnificence & Private Care, Family and Meals & Drink shoppers imagine that firms can do greater than governments in driving world change. And regardless of shoppers displaying some enthusiasm for upcycling, carbon seize, GMOs and nuclear alternate options, 1 / 4 of engaged Magnificence & Private Care, Family and Meals & Drink shoppers discover some environmental points onerous to know. This indicators a necessity for manufacturers to achieve shopper belief and place themselves as a real assistance on shoppers sustainability mission by way of schooling, transparency and actionable steering.
Over half of engaged Magnificence & Private Care and Family consumers frequently examine labelling on a product for data comparable to recyclability and over a 3rd of engaged Meals & Drink shoppers examine on-pack labels for particulars on the environmental initiatives supported by buying the product. This highlights the significance of clear on-pack claims and messaging to help shoppers to beat their mistrust and information them in direction of extra sustainable merchandise.
As shoppers deprioritise sustainable concerns, entrepreneurs should attempt to humanise the local weather disaster and its options. Now greater than ever, shoppers want tangible proof of the constructive influence sustainable merchandise have on folks in advertising communications, in addition to a transparent understanding of the wellbeing and financial benefits of sustainable decisions.
Company sustainability motion equates to a profitable enterprise technique
Being a elementary a part of the issue additionally makes shoppers key to the answer. Shoppers are considering like manufacturers and companies, perceiving sustainability as a public menace and a useful resource problem fairly than an emotive, environmental one. This understanding guides them in direction of making more healthy, and extra environment friendly consumption decisions. Our International Sustainability Report equips you with the strategic insights to know shopper sentiment in a sustainably acutely aware world, serving to you create and adapt your advertising and innovation methods to satisfy the evolving wants of your shoppers.
Discover out extra about our International Sustainability Report 2024-25 which might be out there to obtain on Tuesday third September 2024.
Contact our sustainability consultants at the moment to be taught extra in regards to the report enhancements in Meals & Drink, Magnificence & Private Care, and Family Care classes, together with our custom-made Consulting presentation.
