Question 2

This question also needs to be answered using Case Study I. It asks you to consider the societal marketing issues related to Custom Clothing.

Start your answer by explaining, in your own words, the societal marketing concept using information from Block 4, Reading 36.

Then apply concepts from Reading 36 to identify and discuss the type of product/service (salutary, desirable, deficient and/or pleasing) that Custom Clothing is offering. You should also apply the concepts from Reading 36 to analyse the strategic choices (Feldmans four strategic choices) of Custom Clothing that you think it has considered in response to the societal challenges, justifying your answer accordingly.

You should use approximately 550 words for your answer to this question.

Case Study I: Sustainable and Eco-Friendly T-Shirt Printing A.M. Custom Clothing

You will agree that going green, sustainability and reducing your carbon footprint are huge trends nowadays. With an increase in awareness about the state of the environment, more people are looking for alternatives to products that are harmful to the environment. With increased awareness there is an increase in demand for eco-friendly products. Fortunately, A.M. Custom Clothing recognized the demand for eco-friendly t-shirt printing and are increasing their supply.

A.M. Custom Clothing is a wholesale provider of quality printed and embroidered clothing for uniform, workwear and retail. The company is the UKs leading supplier of wholesale, custom-printed and embroidered clothing. They offer award-winning services and products.

With sustainable and eco-friendly t-shirt printing from A.M. Custom Clothing you have the advantage of handmade products that leave a reduced impact on the environment.

A.M. Custom Clothing ensures that their t-shirt printing is leading in the fashion arena and they help stop exploiting animals and nature in the name of clothing products. Eco-friendly is definitely in, and now! Celebrities are encouraging the trend of using eco-friendly t-shirt printing as high fashion or just socially responsible [] As more and more people become aware of the fragile equilibrium of the environment, there is a natural desire to live their lives with a vision that is compatible with nature. A.M. Custom Clothing does not indulge in practices such as using harsh chemicals, artificial dyes, animal products and the use of materials that generate huge amounts of toxic wastes goes against such a vision.

Using eco-friendly t-shirts helps create eco-consciousness that encourages people to wake up to the desire to protect the environment. Many of these t-shirts carry meaningful messages that encourage people to think of their environment. These t-shirts are right for the skin as they are made of 100% cotton. Also, the dyes used on these materials are low impact dyes that have the least amount of effect on the environment and are gentle on the skin.

About A.M. Custom Clothing

A.M. Custom Clothing was founded in 2012 as a small start-up looking to make waves in the textiles industry. Currently they are one of the fastest growing wholesale providers of custom-printed and embroidered clothing. Many organisations and brands in the UK and worldwide now look to A.M. Custom Clothing as their trusted supplier.

Source: A.M. Custom Clothing, 2020

Reading 36: Societal and environmental issues in marketing

Introduction Marketing is perhaps the most outward-facing function of an organisation and many of the societal and environmental challenges of business and management are easily noticeable in a marketing context. Marketers have been criticised for encouraging excessive consumption and materialism and thus contributing to a lack of environmental sustainability, social envy and a loss of non-material values. While many marketers would argue that marketing does not actually create these problems in society, it merely reflects them, it is in the interest of organisations to consider how their marketing practices impact on societal well-being and environmental sustainability. While Reading 35 focused on the way in which marketing techniques can be used by non-commercial organisations to foster social and political goals, this reading focuses on the societal and sustainability implications of commercial marketing activities. 1 The societal marketing concept One way in which we can think about the social impacts of marketing activity is through the societal marketing concept. This is in many ways an extension of the marketing orientation, discussed in Reading 28. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2010) the societal marketing concept holds that a business should work out what the needs, wants and expectations of its target customers and markets are. It should then satisfy these needs, wants and expectations better and more efficiently than competing businesses, in a way (and here lies the crucial difference with the marketing orientation) that maintains or improves the consumers and societys well-being. Why do we need a societal marketing concept? Kotler and Armstrong (2010) argue that a pure marketing orientation may overlook the fact that what consumers want in the short term and what is good for them in the long term is not necessarily the same. For example, many of us find fast food, such as hamburgers, tasty and consume it frequently, but fast food is often not good for us in the long run because it can be high in fat and low in fibre and essential nutrients. There can also be conflict between what individual consumers desire and what is good either for society at large or for the environment. Transport is a good example. Most of us enjoy the convenience of travelling by car and/or aeroplane, with the result that the number of cars on our roads and the number of air miles travelled each year have increased enormously over recent years. You will probably be aware of the negative consequences of increased travel, such as air pollution and global warming, congested roads and noise from airports. 107 Reading 36: Societal and environmental issues in marketing In 1972 well-known Professor of Marketing, Philip Kotler was among the first to write about the idea of societal marketing. He argued that businesses should think of the products they offered and were developing in terms of two dimensions: 1 the immediate satisfaction they provided to consumers; and 2 the long-term consumer welfare they provided. Figure 1 shows four different types of product, depending on whether the score is high or low on these two dimensions. Immediate satisfaction Low Low High High Long-run consumer welfare

Salutary products	Desirable products
Deficient products	Pleasing products

Figure 1 Classification of new product opportunities (source: adapted from Kotler, 1972) To some extent, these four categories are self-explanatory. Kotler suggests that marketing deficient products will not be successful for businesses because there will be no market for them. Salutary products pose no moral problem but may be difficult to market if consumers derive no immediate satisfaction from them. Many businesses market pleasing products, for which there tends to be a ready market. However, these are precisely the products that, under the societal marketing concept, businesses should not market as they are to the long-term detriment of consumer and societal welfare. Desirable products are just that: desirable for the individual consumer, desirable from a long-term societal perspective and desirable for the business, which should be able to sell these well, and with a good conscience. The societal and environmental implications of marketing began to be discussed extensively in the late 1960s and 1970s. Many of the concerns raised then are still valid today. Feldman (1971) set out what he saw as the main societal challenges for marketing at the time. According to Feldman, the marketing system is designed to provide choice to consumers. While this was once a highly desirable aspect of marketing, it has become problematic once consumer choice and material wealth had reached a certain level. More choice beyond that level not only provides only limited additional benefit, it also increases environmental degradation, for example when more and more powerful air conditioning systems or larger and larger cars are bought, which consume ever more energy. Feldman argues that marketers have a responsibility to mitigate the negative environmental and societal impacts of their actions but that they generally didnt seem to take that responsibility. For Feldman, part of the reason is that marketing practice, as a whole, tends to follow a mainstream belief in Readings 2836 108 Western societies that progress means growth, and that a lack of growth equates to regression. Selling more and more and making products constantly bigger (and better?) is a manifestation of this belief in growth. Furthermore, Feldman argues that marketing has traditionally stressed individual and social satisfaction of consumption (which results from the approval of immediate others, such as friends and family) but has neglected societal satisfaction, which he argues results from the buyers knowledge that their consumption choices benefit society as a whole. An example of societal satisfaction would be if a buyer deliberately chooses a car that minimises energy consumption and pollution. Feldman suggests that marketers can respond to societal challenges through one of four strategic choices:

.	They can ignore the societal and environmental challenges to marketing practice.

. They can resist pressures to respond to these challenges, for example by lobbying against legislation that would restrict existing marketing practice (for example the tobacco industry spent years lobbying against all legislation to restrict tobacco advertising). . They can acquiesce and passively adjust to new legislative requirements. . The final (and in Feldmans view preferable) strategy is to explicitly recognise that marketers need to play their part in meeting societal and environmental challenges and to accept and proactively anticipate legislation and societal pressure for change. Prothero (1990) linked the societal marketing concept with increasing environmental concerns of consumers and argued that these concerns make it necessary for marketers to take their environmental and societal responsibilities seriously. She points out that many companies seemed to jump on the green bandwagon in the 1980s following green consumer pressure but that some had put in place green or societal marketing strategies much earlier than that, seemingly resulting from the genuine convictions of a companys owners or top management. Environmental concerns in marketing are considered in more detail in the second main section of this reading, below