Week 1
Lecture 1:
Introduction
Marketing: the activity and set institutions and processes for creating, communicating,
delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and
society at large.
Strategic marketing: organization, inter-organizational and environmental phenomena
concerned with (1) the behavior of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions
with consumers, customers, competitors and other external constituencies, in the context of
the creation, communication and delivery of products that offer value to customers in
exchanges with organizations, and (2) the general management responsibilities associated
with the boundary spanning role of the marketing function in organizations.
Reading > Argues for a marketing-driving change process towards sustainable marketing.
This is proactive in changing buyers towards sustainable purchases and competitors towards
sustainable innovation. With companies as change agents guided by governments
“Marketing, through its market-driven consumption-oriented practices, may have
knowingly or unknowingly promoted these unsustainable production-consumption
practices. Therefore, it needs to change its orientation from merely being
responsive to consumer and market needs into a more responsible approach that
drives markets for sustainable products and services and builds sustainable
societies.”
From market-driven to sustainable marketing
,Lecture 2:
Sustainable Transition Pathways
By the end of this lecture, you will be able to:
- Elaborate on the MLP-model for sustainable market transformation and apply it
- Discuss the important transition pathways within this model, and recognize and apply
them
- Elaborate on the strategic marketing implication of the MLP-model and its pathways.
Transition characteristics and approaches
Characteristics of Sustainability transitions:
- Multi-dimensionality and co-evolution
There are multiple dimensions (e.g. technologies, markets, user practices, etc.) each
having their own change path (= co-evolution)
- Multi-actor process
- Stability and change:
There are many green innovations, but at the same time deeply entrenched systems
that are ‘locked in’ and difficult to change.
- Long-term process
Sustainable innovation takes time, unlocking systems is complex and requires
patience, process is non-linear
- Open-endedness and uncertainty
Multiple innovations and initiatives, multiple pathways, therefore uncertain where
and how it ends
- Values, contestation, and disagreement
- Normative identicality
Sustainability is a public good, prone to commons dilemmas. The normative direction
should therefor come from society (public policy).
Approaches to Sustainability Transitions:
- Technological innovation systems: Drawing on innovation systems theory and
economics.
- Strategic niche management: Radical (niche) innovations emerge in protected spaces
that shield them from mainstream market selection and are often developed by new
entrants or relative outsiders.
- Transition management: Managerial perspective distinguishing strategic, tactical,
operational and evaluation activities.
- Multiple-Level Perspective (MLP) (!)
Sustainability transitions: the MLP model
Multi-level perspective (MLP) understands transitions as outcomes of alignments between
developments at multiple levels. MLP distinguishes three levels of heuristic, analytical
concepts:
1) niche-innovations: protected spaces and the locus/place for radical innovations;
2) sociotechnical regimes: represent the institutional structuring of existing systems
leading to path dependence and incremental change;
3) and sociotechnical landscape: wider context, which influences niche and regime
dynamics. Highlights not only the technical and material backdrop that sustains
, society, but also includes demographical trends, political ideologies, societal valels,
and macro-economic patterns.
The multi-level perspective argues that transitions come about through interactions
between processes at these three levels: (a) niche-innovations build up internal momentum,
through learning processes, price/performance improvements, and support from powerful
groups, (b) changes at the landscape level create pressure (and opportunities) on the regime
and (c) destabilization of the regime creates windows of opportunity for niche-innovations.
The alignment of these processes enables the breakthrough of novelties in mainstream
markets where they compete with the existing regime.
Sustainability transitions occur at the regime level. Factors stabilizing regimes:
- Cognitive routines that blind engineers to developments outside their focus.
- Regulations and standards
- Adaptations of consumers’ lifestyles and culture to technical systems
- Sunk/specific investments
- Infrastructures and competences
These factors must be changes in order to go through a transition (and stabilized after).
Lecture 1:
Introduction
Marketing: the activity and set institutions and processes for creating, communicating,
delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and
society at large.
Strategic marketing: organization, inter-organizational and environmental phenomena
concerned with (1) the behavior of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions
with consumers, customers, competitors and other external constituencies, in the context of
the creation, communication and delivery of products that offer value to customers in
exchanges with organizations, and (2) the general management responsibilities associated
with the boundary spanning role of the marketing function in organizations.
Reading > Argues for a marketing-driving change process towards sustainable marketing.
This is proactive in changing buyers towards sustainable purchases and competitors towards
sustainable innovation. With companies as change agents guided by governments
“Marketing, through its market-driven consumption-oriented practices, may have
knowingly or unknowingly promoted these unsustainable production-consumption
practices. Therefore, it needs to change its orientation from merely being
responsive to consumer and market needs into a more responsible approach that
drives markets for sustainable products and services and builds sustainable
societies.”
From market-driven to sustainable marketing
,Lecture 2:
Sustainable Transition Pathways
By the end of this lecture, you will be able to:
- Elaborate on the MLP-model for sustainable market transformation and apply it
- Discuss the important transition pathways within this model, and recognize and apply
them
- Elaborate on the strategic marketing implication of the MLP-model and its pathways.
Transition characteristics and approaches
Characteristics of Sustainability transitions:
- Multi-dimensionality and co-evolution
There are multiple dimensions (e.g. technologies, markets, user practices, etc.) each
having their own change path (= co-evolution)
- Multi-actor process
- Stability and change:
There are many green innovations, but at the same time deeply entrenched systems
that are ‘locked in’ and difficult to change.
- Long-term process
Sustainable innovation takes time, unlocking systems is complex and requires
patience, process is non-linear
- Open-endedness and uncertainty
Multiple innovations and initiatives, multiple pathways, therefore uncertain where
and how it ends
- Values, contestation, and disagreement
- Normative identicality
Sustainability is a public good, prone to commons dilemmas. The normative direction
should therefor come from society (public policy).
Approaches to Sustainability Transitions:
- Technological innovation systems: Drawing on innovation systems theory and
economics.
- Strategic niche management: Radical (niche) innovations emerge in protected spaces
that shield them from mainstream market selection and are often developed by new
entrants or relative outsiders.
- Transition management: Managerial perspective distinguishing strategic, tactical,
operational and evaluation activities.
- Multiple-Level Perspective (MLP) (!)
Sustainability transitions: the MLP model
Multi-level perspective (MLP) understands transitions as outcomes of alignments between
developments at multiple levels. MLP distinguishes three levels of heuristic, analytical
concepts:
1) niche-innovations: protected spaces and the locus/place for radical innovations;
2) sociotechnical regimes: represent the institutional structuring of existing systems
leading to path dependence and incremental change;
3) and sociotechnical landscape: wider context, which influences niche and regime
dynamics. Highlights not only the technical and material backdrop that sustains
, society, but also includes demographical trends, political ideologies, societal valels,
and macro-economic patterns.
The multi-level perspective argues that transitions come about through interactions
between processes at these three levels: (a) niche-innovations build up internal momentum,
through learning processes, price/performance improvements, and support from powerful
groups, (b) changes at the landscape level create pressure (and opportunities) on the regime
and (c) destabilization of the regime creates windows of opportunity for niche-innovations.
The alignment of these processes enables the breakthrough of novelties in mainstream
markets where they compete with the existing regime.
Sustainability transitions occur at the regime level. Factors stabilizing regimes:
- Cognitive routines that blind engineers to developments outside their focus.
- Regulations and standards
- Adaptations of consumers’ lifestyles and culture to technical systems
- Sunk/specific investments
- Infrastructures and competences
These factors must be changes in order to go through a transition (and stabilized after).
