University Report: Sustainability and Stakeholder Marketing Analysis

This report delves into the critical concepts of sustainability and stakeholder marketing, offering a comprehensive analysis of their significance in contemporary business practices. The first section defines stakeholders, emphasizing their impact on organizational outcomes and providing examples of effective stakeholder engagement by companies like Alibaba and Walmart. The report highlights how these organizations prioritize stakeholders, including customers, employees, and investors, and integrate stakeholder perspectives into their strategies. The second section examines sustainability and stakeholder marketing as a long-term orientation, focusing on value creation through sustainable offerings. It explores the evolution of marketing approaches, the importance of integrating social, economic, and environmental variables, and the role of technology in stakeholder engagement. The report discusses how sustainable marketing incorporates a stakeholder-based approach to achieve market competitiveness and profitability, emphasizing the creation of long-term value for both consumers and stakeholders through sustainable offerings. It also highlights the increasing awareness of corporate practices among stakeholders and the challenges faced by businesses in selling sustainability, while underscoring the importance of a macro marketing system management approach. The report concludes by emphasizing the benefits of sustainable market orientation in enhancing brand reputation and fostering innovation and consistent learning.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
Sustainability and Stakeholder Marketing

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Q1. REFLECT on the meaning and the importance of STAKEHOLDERS. Provide
EXAMPLES of how a named organisation deals effectively with its multiple
stakeholders.
Answer 1. A stakeholder is known to be as individual, group or an enterprise who is
impacted by the outcome or decision making of an organisation. Stakeholders have a
substantial level of interest in the success of the organisation project and may cause positive
or negative influence on the same (Davis, 2014). Some of the general examples of
stakeholders include customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, communities and
governments. However, each stakeholder differs from one another in terms of interest, unique
needs and objectives. For example, customers may have significant interest in product or
service quality and at the same time, an employee can have a stake in its income and job
security. The investors, on the other hand, have stake in company financial returns and
similarly, the government can showcase its stake in taxes and GDP. However, many times a
company faces difficulties and challenges in dealing with these stakeholders effectively due
to their demands and request.
For business to grow, it requires to keep in innovating, doing new things, forming new
projects and attracting stakeholders including consumers. With the development of a new
project or at the time of developing any strategic plans, - the first step of any business is to
discover that which stakeholders get directly or indirectly affected by the decision and
business function. In simple words, organisation required to identify all key stakeholders
related to their decision or projects so as to ensure the project success. Engaging stakeholders
before the planning and during the decision or project will help in reducing various risks in
both internal and external environment (Davis, 2016).

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Stakeholders make offers the business practical and financial support ranging from
employees to loyal consumers to the investors. A successful association between the business
and its stakeholders develop on working jointly towards the common objectives. When a
business engaged with the community of these stakeholders, it is possible for them to reap
financial gains from such association and further beneficial for businesses in their expansion
projects either domestically or internationally. Wang and Sengupta (2016) also stated that
cultivating relationships with the stakeholders is long term viability and practice rather than
short term dividends.
The more business consistently engages with the stakeholders, the more likely, they will
receive positive project conclusion. In other words, effective engagement with all the
stakeholders helps in translating their needs into organisational goals and creates the basis of
effective strategy development and according to Luo and Du (2015), a shared understanding
is also necessary to develop a cohesive vision for the future and it can be accomplished by
clear and consistent communication. Hence, a more integrated approach to stakeholder
engagement can help the businesses in proactive response to the emerging needs with
considering of political risks, societal transformations and dramatic moves in perception at all
levels.
Taking example of one of the famous company Alibaba and its CEO Alibaba, the
stakeholders are ranked in a specific priority sequence i.e. – 1. Customers, 2. Employees and
3. Investors. He explained the reasons behind this during a conference in 2012 that – “if the
consumer is happy, the business is happy and the shareholders are happy”. Jack Ma also
wrote this thing in a letter to investors in advance of companies recording breaking $25
million IPO (Trammell, 2014). However, in my opinion, I consider the balance of these three
constituents and this makes everyone in the company to consider the interest of all three
constituencies when making any plans or decisions.

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The next example is of Walmart which plays huge efforts in stakeholder engagement. As a
leading retailer, the believes that their performance depends on direct and regular engagement
with consumers, community, leaders, employers and other different stakeholders and better
stakeholder perspectives and feedback can improve the effectiveness and relevance of their
products, practices and services. Furthermore, the company has prioritized all stakeholders
with their ESG priorities. It can be well shown in the image below –
Source: (walmart.com, 2018)
With changing time and pace, various companies are also engaging with all their stakeholders
through the help of technology such as Marks and Spencer reach a wider set of stakeholders
in new ways, like experimenting with real-time, mobile survey tools to engage with line staffs
in their factories and also to their suppliers. In the five nations, M&S undertake survey of
more than 60 k employees and present them an opportunity to offer anonymous feedback on
the working conditions (Gigtman, 2015). Furthermore, M&S also engage the collective

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creativity of their clients and consumers with the help of crowdsourcing platform such as My
Starbucks Idea and it benefits their business with conceptualizing new products and
improvements to their services.
Q2. Explain how sustainability and stakeholder marketing can be viewed as a long term
ORIENTATION in terms of creating VALUE through SUSTAINABLE offerings?
Answer 2. The world is moving fastly towards a post carbon and sustainable lifestyle and this
makes the role of marketing under tough analysis. From many years, the function of
marketing has highly been emphasized on consumer acquisition and satisfaction and gaining
more market share and clearing asides the evolving views of other stakeholders such as
community and government (Hillebrand, Driessen and Koll, 2015). This has resulted in rising
public disparagement towards the brands in relation with their offerings, products and
services as they are a part of the society and abide by the rules and legislations of the
government. This has make seen the corporations towards importance of sustainability and
stakeholder marketing which was widely ignored by the management and marketing
professionals.
Sustainable marketing orientation distinguishes from other sustainable corporate strategies
such as triple bottom line, CSR and green marketing and rather takes more of a stakeholder
based approach with allowing firm to attain goals and market competitiveness and
profitability with the value system engrossed in social, economic and environmental variables
(Steyn and Niemann, 2014). However, this also criticizes the traditional short term and micro
economic plans of firms and its cost linked to environment protection. It creates the
development of a synthesized framework of market orientation and sustainability for the
mutually beneficial relationships to maximise the long term performance. This paradigm shift

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traces the evolution of marketing approaches near a recommended replication research and
assessment in other regions and nations.
Sustainable and stakeholder marketing incorporates a more widely-based and inclusive
approach in corporate branding, communication, development of products and pricing so as
to create value via sustainable offerings. Trencher et al. (2014) defined sustainability as the
quest for new ways of production, consumption and living and increase the benefits that
future generation obtain from ecosystem. The sustainable offerings and value can be created
in the market through integration of sustainable and stakeholder marketing which is
ecologically oriented, viable in terms of economic and technical aspects, ethical and
relationship based. Some of the predecessors of sustainability marketing include societal
marketing, social marketing, ecological marketing and environmental/green marketing.
Framing of sustainability and stakeholder marketing includes recognising socio-ecological
problems, government targets and consumer needs. Linking sustainability to the organisation
identity help in align brand ethos with a purpose driven mission and this further entails more
than adding some aspects to the mission statement like taking example of food retailer Tesco,
the company is offering value to all its stakeholders through their clear commitment to
sustainable marketing like tackling food waste and establishing enviro-responsibility
throughout the supply chain. In the digital age, more number of customers and stakeholders
are getting aware about the corporate practices as of whistleblowing (Andrade, 2015) and this
is creating great challenges for the business firms while forcing them to implement
sustainable practices in every area and functions whether it is marketing or human resource.
As consumer and stakeholders are getting increasingly aware, companies are finding selling
sustainability as a challenging practice, however, these organisations have widened their
focus to include more roles, functions and emphasis on the macro business environment.

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Sustainable marketing combines market orientation principles with a macro marketing system
management approach, whereas, enables an organisation to create value through sustainable
offerings in relation with a stakeholder approach to integrate business social responsibility
and marketing tactics (Mason and Simmons, 2014). Hence, a long term value can be created
for both consumer group and stakeholders when a business sustainable market orientation aid
in thinking beyond the functional management and micro economic environment.
From the long term perspectives, these sustainable offering will benefit business in terms on
enhancement of both brand and firm reputation and offer them a capability to hold both
efficient and competitive products and services. In simple words, organisation will be praised
by both market and societal recognition from the perspective of government as well as
community and this becomes a critical driver for such benefits integrated to organisational
innovation and consistent learning. Furthermore, such indicators are just been seen on a
starting phase and a corporate put significant efforts at all stages of business life cycle, it can
become more prevalent in the respective industry with a shift from economic profitability
towards sustainable and stakeholder marketing.

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References
Andrade, J.A. (2015) Reconceptualising whistleblowing in a complex world. Journal of
Business Ethics, 128(2), pp.321-335.
Davis, K. (2014) Different stakeholder groups and their perceptions of project
success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.189-201.
Davis, K. (2016) A method to measure success dimensions relating to individual stakeholder
groups. International Journal of Project Management, 34(3), pp.480-493.
Gigtman, L. (2015) 16 companies’ breakthroughs in stakeholder engagement [ONLINE]
Available from: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/16-companies-breakthroughs-stakeholder-
engagement/ [Accessed 26/03/2020].
Hillebrand, B., Driessen, P.H. and Koll, O. (2015) Stakeholder marketing: Theoretical
foundations and required capabilities. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(4),
pp.411-428.
Luo, X. and Du, S. (2015) Exploring the relationship between corporate social responsibility
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Mason, C. and Simmons, J. (2014) Embedding corporate social responsibility in corporate
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Steyn, B. and Niemann, L. (2014) Strategic role of public relations in enterprise strategy,
governance and sustainability—A normative framework. Public Relations Review, 40(2),
pp.171-183.

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Trammell, J. (2014) Is Jack Ma’s Priority of Customers, Employees Then Shareholders
Correct? [ONLINE] Available from: https://theamericanceo.com/2014/10/02/jack-mas-
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walmart.com. (2018) 2018 GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY REPORT SUMMARY [ONLINE]
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