Question 1

With the harsh competition in the market, businesses are adopting new marketing methods in order to foster a positive and long-lasting relationships with their customers. This has seen the emergence of sustainability marketing that is aimed at making the consumers more responsible by ensuring that they use moral authority to purchase products that are safe to the society and the environment (Anderson, Garavan and Sadler-Smith,2014). This is a shift from past marketing where the majority of businesses were only concerned with the profits made and had little or nothing to do with sustainability. Nevertheless, the emergence of environmental problems has made businesses consider their models in search of products that would help conserve the environment such as manufacturing products that are 100% recyclable. Comparing sustainability marketing impact on compelling corporates to incorporate sustainability in their operations, it is evident that the past marketing approaches adopted did little to help the social-environmental relationships. This can be explained by looking at the effort being put by the current businesses as well as the consumers to ensure that the products purchased do not lead to environmental degradation. The main idea is to ensure that the current generation can be able to enjoy life as it is today without putting the survival of the future generations in jeopardy.

Considering past marketing approaches that have been applied to address marketing-society-environment relationships, it is notable that each of the approaches had the weaknesses of concentrating on one factor without considering how the problems associated with other aspects would be solved. For instance, societal marketing focused on the behaviour of people pertaining to a certain commodity with a program to improve their well-being. In this approach, it is quite clear that the aspect of the environment is not addressed. The other approaches including social and ecological marketing are concerned with a single aspect of the marketing-society-environment. However, for businesses to strike a balance they must ensure that all the aspects of marketing are involved so that the consumers have informed decisions when buying products. For instance, having the knowledge that the purchase of a given product is sustainable in the sense that its purchase does not interfere with the quality of life the future generations will lead can make a person spend more in order to own the product. Sustainability marketing enables a business to foster a thriving relationship with its customers due to its involvement in the welfare of the society by ensuring sustainability of its operations which guarantees a more quality life for the current and the future generations.

Comparing sustainability market and other approaches to marketing-society-environmental relationships, it is evident that the former is a combination of all the other preceding approaches. This is due to the fact that sustainability marketing is ecologically oriented in the sense that it considers the limits of the earth’s ecology thereby proposing ways in which businesses can be able to benefit from the ecology sustainably. Also, this marketing strategy is viable as well as ethical since it seeks to achieve justice and equity in the society. Also, sustainability marketing promotes healthy relationships between businesses, the stakeholders and the society where the businesses operate. The main principle of the triple bottom line is that it has made companies to migrate from the traditional focus on the profit a company makes and focus on other key areas of sustainability. These other factors are social and environmental impacts a company’s operations have (Slaper and Hall,2011). The three bottom line approach is in fact a migration towards sustainability marketing since it incorporates important areas in the society that companies should ensure are protected in their operations so as to ensure current and future generations are able to survive through sustainable development. It can be seen that through incorporating people, profit and the planet in the triple bottom line, it comes closer to the principles of sustainability marketing which as mentioned earlier is ecologically oriented, viable, ethical and relationship-based. By anchoring a business on the three P’s, it is guaranteed that the needs of the environment, the society as well as profitability of the business will be sustainable.

Question 2

Sustainability and stakeholder marketing can be used as a means of long orientation for creating value through sustainable offerings. It should be noted that both sustainability and stakeholder marketing seek to foster constructive relationships between the business and the other stakeholders. A long-term healthy relationship would ensure that the needs and concerns of the consumers are considered in coming up with the various products a business entity deals with. For instance, the current generation is more concerned with living in a clean environment. At the same time, human rights organizations have strived to fight for equity in all sectors of the society. This implies that a business employing sustainability and stakeholder marketing will be in a position to appeal to the majority of the consumers since the two strive to ensure that their organizations are sensitive to environment, society and governance issues.

By incorporating stakeholders of a business in formulating business strategies, we note the concerns and ideas of every person would be taken into consideration therefore ensuring that sustainability and stakeholder marketing can be employed as a long term orientation. Bearing in mind that stakeholders groups involve customers, regulators, employees, suppliers and the local community, fostering a healthy relationship among these groups thereby getting their honest opinion on what should be done can be considered to be the best approach to ensuring that value is created through sustainable offerings (Hult et al.,2011). Note that from the members of the stakeholders, it is quite probable that there will be a good number of people with diverse opinions which should inform the decisions an organization takes when it comes to its operations. This would ensure that sustainability is part and parcel of the decisions made as well as in the policies adopted. Consequently, sustainability and stakeholder marketing would have been utilized to achieve long term orientation. Bearing in mind that the existing relationships are long-term, it is possible to ensure that the policies of the business are reviewed over time to conform with sustainable production and marketing.

Sustainable and stakeholders marketing can easily be used to ensure that the products offered by a given organization are ethically appealing to consumers. It should be noted that in the current era of human rights and environmental activism, consumers are becoming more ethical in the sense that products from a given corporation that is deemed to ignore environmental conservation and human rights violations can be boycotted. However, sustainability marketing as well as use of stakeholders to market an organization can be used to ensure that consumers understand the values of an organization when it comes to environment, society and governance. Through demonstrating that an organization is committed to ensuring that it strictly adheres to a sustainable business model, it would be possible to gain more customers especially the ethical ones.

By use of sustainability and stakeholder marketing it becomes quite simple to overcome some of the challenges of long term orientation such as recruiting and retaining staff as well as maintaining shareholder confidence hence the control of the company. There is a need to note that by constantly engaging with stakeholders it becomes easier to identify new regulations that need to be adhered to hence tailor the company operations to conform with the laws. Further, by use of sustainable marketing the aspect of difficulty in recruiting and retaining the best brains becomes solved since by fostering positive relationships between the various stakeholders, the views of the staff are listened to and their needs addressed. further, disposing of waste as a challenge of possible long-term orientation is easily addressed when using sustainable marketing since it basically calls for businesses to ensure that the environment is conserved even as they strive to make a profit. Note that in this form of marketing, emphasis is not placed solely on profits but rather distributed to the three core pillars of ESG (environment, society and governance). Consequently, by solving the challenges that could arise when a company is focusing on long-term orientation in terms of creating value through sustainable offerings, it is evident that sustainability and stakeholder marketing can be considered with the expectation that a company will have positive results as far as meeting its goals is concerned.