Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Environmental Performance in Customer Communications

Gardner, Stephanie and Olsson, Anna-Karin (2014) MIO920
Production Management
Abstract
Corporate environmental efforts are now valued higher than ever and need to be communicated to customers in a successful manner. Companies today wish to promote themselves as sustainable and use environmental performance to obtain competitive advantages. SKF is promoting themselves as an environmentally sustainable supplier and wishes to ascertain how environmental performance can be communicated to strengthen and support its products.
This project is limited to evaluate environmental performance by its usability in communication towards customers and not for their effectiveness as environmental efforts as such. The analysis and recommendations are geographically limited to the Swedish market and are primarily applicable to this market.
... (More)
Corporate environmental efforts are now valued higher than ever and need to be communicated to customers in a successful manner. Companies today wish to promote themselves as sustainable and use environmental performance to obtain competitive advantages. SKF is promoting themselves as an environmentally sustainable supplier and wishes to ascertain how environmental performance can be communicated to strengthen and support its products.
This project is limited to evaluate environmental performance by its usability in communication towards customers and not for their effectiveness as environmental efforts as such. The analysis and recommendations are geographically limited to the Swedish market and are primarily applicable to this market.
How can environmental performance be used to promote industrial components in B2B customer communications?
The project uses mainly qualitative data and some quantitative. The qualitative data consists of literature review, benchmark, and interviews with key SKF personnel and customers. The quantitative data extracted from of an externally produced customer survey.
Conclusions show the importance of building a comprehensive brand image by incorporating product specific environmental performance (PSEP™) and environmental efforts which enhance the sustainable supplier brand image (SSBI™) in the environmental communication. Sustainable supplier brand image can be enhanced by including the following three things in the environmental communications:
(1) SKF’s commitment to continuously improving environmental performance: focus on implemented processes and should use the Beyond Zero concept and portfolio to exemplify the efforts.
(2) Certifications: focus on communicating ISO 50001.
(3) Third-party verification and partnership: focus on SKF WWF Climate Savers membership.
While product specific environmental performance can enhance sustainable supplier brand image a reputation as a sustainable supplier is a necessity to successfully communicate the benefits of product specific environmental performance.
Communication of product specific environmental performance should always clearly communicate the correlation between PSEP™ and financial savings. To achieve this, it is important to have knowledge of customers’ KPI’s and communicate PSEP™ that is connected to those. It is also important to communicate measurements customers can relate to. Recommendations for communicating PSEP™ beyond this can be divided into two parts:
(1) Recommendation for environmentally aware customers:
Communicate LCA on a more complex and comprehensive level by including all parameters measured in a LCA, not limiting communication of LCA results to Beyond Zero products, and using visual tools in communication of LCA.
(2) Recommendation for environmental unaware customers:
Communicate effective and easily comprehendible information in every customer contact by providing SKF bearing packaging with a table of fundamental environmental parameters. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Gardner, Stephanie and Olsson, Anna-Karin
supervisor
organization
course
MIO920
year
type
M1 - University Diploma
subject
keywords
Environmental efforts - sustainable supplier - brand image - environmental communication - marketing tools – LCA – DfE - code of conduct - sustainability report –sustainable supply chain - customer demand.
other publication id
14/5495
language
English
id
4519485
date added to LUP
2014-06-26 13:46:01
date last changed
2014-06-26 13:46:01
@misc{4519485,
  abstract     = {{Corporate environmental efforts are now valued higher than ever and need to be communicated to customers in a successful manner. Companies today wish to promote themselves as sustainable and use environmental performance to obtain competitive advantages. SKF is promoting themselves as an environmentally sustainable supplier and wishes to ascertain how environmental performance can be communicated to strengthen and support its products.
This project is limited to evaluate environmental performance by its usability in communication towards customers and not for their effectiveness as environmental efforts as such. The analysis and recommendations are geographically limited to the Swedish market and are primarily applicable to this market.
How can environmental performance be used to promote industrial components in B2B customer communications?
The project uses mainly qualitative data and some quantitative. The qualitative data consists of literature review, benchmark, and interviews with key SKF personnel and customers. The quantitative data extracted from of an externally produced customer survey.
Conclusions show the importance of building a comprehensive brand image by incorporating product specific environmental performance (PSEP™) and environmental efforts which enhance the sustainable supplier brand image (SSBI™) in the environmental communication. Sustainable supplier brand image can be enhanced by including the following three things in the environmental communications:
(1) SKF’s commitment to continuously improving environmental performance: focus on implemented processes and should use the Beyond Zero concept and portfolio to exemplify the efforts.
(2) Certifications: focus on communicating ISO 50001.
(3) Third-party verification and partnership: focus on SKF WWF Climate Savers membership.
While product specific environmental performance can enhance sustainable supplier brand image a reputation as a sustainable supplier is a necessity to successfully communicate the benefits of product specific environmental performance.
Communication of product specific environmental performance should always clearly communicate the correlation between PSEP™ and financial savings. To achieve this, it is important to have knowledge of customers’ KPI’s and communicate PSEP™ that is connected to those. It is also important to communicate measurements customers can relate to. Recommendations for communicating PSEP™ beyond this can be divided into two parts:
(1) Recommendation for environmentally aware customers:
Communicate LCA on a more complex and comprehensive level by including all parameters measured in a LCA, not limiting communication of LCA results to Beyond Zero products, and using visual tools in communication of LCA.
(2) Recommendation for environmental unaware customers:
Communicate effective and easily comprehendible information in every customer contact by providing SKF bearing packaging with a table of fundamental environmental parameters.}},
  author       = {{Gardner, Stephanie and Olsson, Anna-Karin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Environmental Performance in Customer Communications}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}