Can consumers commit to sustainable products?

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the May-June 2021 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

May-June 2021

Indulge me for a minute, while I lead a cheer for our profession. I wrote my column for the January 2021 issue of SCMR one Sunday morning after watching the first trucks full of vaccine roll out of a Pfizer plant in Michigan, headed for a UPS sortation depot. I felt an incredible sense of optimism for the country, and pride in the role that we, as supply chain managers, were going to play to combat a pandemic. Supply chain as in the spotlight, and on that morning, it was for all the right reasons. Fast forward to late April 2021.

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Existing academic and industry research, which is largely based on survey findings, suggests that a sizable group of consumers want to support social justice and environmental conservation through their shopping decisions. But to what extent does this support translate into sales of sustainable products? The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics carried out research in one particular market—coffee—to find out.

According to our study of coffee purchases, it seems that consumers are not strongly committed to Fair Trade or organic labels given the current offerings at grocery stores. We found that the price premium—the typical reason that consumers don’t buy sustainable products—is not the sole reason consumers turn away from this type of purchase.

However, the news is not all bad for purveyors of sustainable coffee products. Our findings also suggest that certified sustainable coffee can be more competitive if consumers have a wider variety of certified coffees to choose from than what is currently available. In other words, companies need to be more innovative in the way they sell sustainable alternatives to traditional coffee varieties.

Reality gaps

In an effort to attract elusive socially- and environmentally-conscious buyers, some companies have invested in ways to improve and communicate their supply chain sustainability practices. A common approach is to use third-party certification labels to differentiate a company’s products.

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