The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market with the Planet

by Magali A Delmas

The market for green products has expanded rapidly over the last decade, but most consumers need something more than eco-benefits to motivate their purchases. Magali A. Delmas and David Colgan argue that many green products now offer the total package―a "green bundle" that checks the environmental box, but also offers improved performance, health benefits, savings, and status. To help consumers cut through the noise and make their best decisions, we need new strategies. The Green Bundle offers some of the best and most effective communication techniques for pushing consumers in the right direction. Framing product benefits to motivate behavior is the key. Combining insights from sustainable business and behavioral economics, Delmas and Colgan show managers how to lead buyers from information to action. If you are looking to win over the convenient consumer or understand how companies can create the next tipping point in green consumption, this is the research-based, practical guide for you.

Genres: Sustainability, Business, Science, Economics

288 pages, Hardcover

Published July 31, 2018

Reviews

[Db]

Magali Delmas and David Colgan invested years of research and academic publications into a holistic guide designed to combine environmental concerns and private company benefits. The result is a major contribution to one of the world’s most urgent debates: how do we balance the consumers’ desire to purchase greener more environmentally-friendly products with business prerogatives of the bottom line?
“The Green Bundle” brings so many pragmatic answers to what many believed was an intractable contradiction. The highly-engaging book outlines how this can be achieved through an approach that accounts for both the egoistic and altruistic motivations of consumers. The densely packaged vision promotes environmentally friendly benefits and improved commercial performance, savings, status and health benefits. The book also describes the pivotal role of the sustainable designer who can incorporate “environmental impacts into design tactics (which) take into consideration the entire life cycle of the product”. Crucially, this sustainable designer can break our daily consumption patterns which have devastating effects on the world’s ecosystem. These advances need to be relayed by business communication strategies which respect the way people use products. “Green bundle information strategies need to ensure a good flow of information between different areas of firms to avoid miscommunication about environmental benefits.”
Such insights by the co-authors are backed up by dozens of illustrations ranging from case studies in the automotive industry, to Airbnb and Uber. Delmas and Colgan unite these in-depth examples with rigorous theoretical research to describe how a business/consumer coalition could unite to save the planet. They use eye-opening examples in a compelling and easy-to-read guide which should appeal to all actors in this multi-billion dollar sector.
Daniel Brown, senior editor at HEC Paris business school.

[A Ter]

By focusing on the "green bundle" -- i.e., a win-win-win where environmental performance goes alongside with cost/product performance -- the authors overlooked the harder question of where consumers will land or how to communicate when there is some sort of tradeoff. Except for a short dismissive paragraph in the conclusion, they also overlook one of the most important unanswered questions: consumer willingness to pay a premium (i.e., how much is it on average, how does it break out across certain groups).

[Mia]

This is a great read. It is well researched and very entertaining. It provides a novel approach to convince the convenient environmentalists to take a step towards green behavior with plenty of examples on how to implement it. I recommend it!

[Melanie]

Well thought out premise -- interesting case studies and great primary source research. A bit repetitive but all in all a useful read for any sustainability or marketing professional.