brands
Branding sustainability: Opportunity and risk behind a brand-based approach to sustainable markets
The need for sustainable market exchange
Introducing sustainability as a core value and practice in business is said to be one of society’s most promising means for safeguarding natural resources and eco-systems. This has led to much interest in how to integrate sustainability into the market-economic system. This view is expressed in the European Commission’s (2008) Sustainable Consumption and Production and Sustainable Industrial Policy Action Plan, which aims at combining the benefits of economic activity with the principle of sustainable development.
The ethics of the brand
Introduction
Ethical brands have risen to prominence in recent years as a market solution to a diverse range of political, social and, in this case most interestingly, ethical problems. By signifying the ethical beliefs of the firm behind them, ethical brands offer an apparently simple solution to ethical consumers: buy into the brands that represent the value systems that they believe in and avoid buying into those with value-systems that they do not believe in.
Ethics of the brand
Ethical brands have risen to prominence in recent years as a market solution to a diverse range of political, social and, in this case most interestingly, ethical problems. By signifying the ethical beliefs of the firm behind them, ethical brands offer an apparently simple solution to ethical consumers: buy into the brands that represent the value systems that they believe in and avoid buying into those with value-systems that they do not believe in.
