Strategic marketing as a driver of sustainable consumption: use-case in the smartphone industry

Details

Supervisors

Denis, Sabine

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Following that the smartphone industry is one of the most polluting industries worldwide, this thesis investigates how strategic marketing can be leveraged to convince consumers to opt for more sustainable consumption choices within the industry, something that has not truly been researched before. The literature review investigates important concepts of strategic marketing, how to leverage strategic marketing for common good, sustainable consumption (including definition & drivers), the smartphone industry, and the refurbished smartphone market in Belgium. The literature enabled me to develop a model & hypotheses of how strategic marketing can be leveraged for common good. Following my chosen research domain of the Belgian refurbished smartphone market, I decided to conduct semi-structured interviews with both, market players & marketing experts. The interviews enabled me to deepen my insights on how to leverage strategic marketing for common good within the Belgian refurbished smartphone market. My interviews with market players also enabled me to gain deeper insights in the business models, motivations of market players, and partnership potentials. My discussions with strategic marketing experts enabled me to refine my results with market players by assessing how they can leverage strategic marketing better, how they can use strategic marketing to tackle market barriers, but also how they leverage strategic marketing to innovate on the market. The results from my discussions with market players & marketing experts create value from an academic perspective by analysing how strategic marketing can be leveraged for common good within the smartphone industry (something that hasn’t extensively been studied before), identifying drivers of sustainable consumption for refurbished smartphones in Belgium, and how the theoretical model can be refined thanks to practical insights from market players & experts. The results also create value from a managerial perspective by demonstrating how companies within the Belgian refurbished smartphone market can leverage strategic marketing for common good to convince consumers to choose for more sustainable consumption methods. The results can also be utilised by other players in other markets and/or industries as an inspiration of how to effectively leverage strategic marketing for common good.