Social Initiatives as a Part of Their Business Plan?

If you look at the recent marketing and advertising trends, you will see that, many companies are talking about their green initiatives in different advertisement and green marketing campaigns. Some of them are really taking a sustainable initiative and some of them are just joining some green movement to get an edge over their competitors. In some cases, companies are endorsing different environment development campaigns not only to help the project but also to create a story for the target market.

However today, this is not just another development story told by the companies. People have started believing this story and they are now more aware about these initiatives. In addition, many people of your target market expect that you will be taking such an initiative. This is not just an advertisement add-on any more. This is a demand in market.

If you think, you can stay away from these initiatives because your target market is yet to make such demands; it is high time for you to think twice. Why?

The first thing you must understand is that, you do not run your production company in isolation. You are just part of a long chain and thus if something hits the far end of the chain, it is going to make some impact on your business too. You simply cannot avoid these problems.

You may be thinking that as you are an online grocery shop owner, hike in oil price will not affect you much. Did you notice how, the hike in oil price raises the production cost of the products that you are selling? To add to this, your target market will have less money to spend on grocery. Hike in oil price will directly affect your business model as to keep up with the same profit margin you will have to reduce the production or establishment costs. If you love data, here is some information for you: between 2006 and 2008, the average world price for oil rose by 110%, rice by 217%, wheat by 136%, maize by 125%! How would you keep up with this situation under the same strategies? How would you meet employee demands to keep up with this change? Inflation will hit you even if you are a web product developer for the same reason.

If we continue depending mostly on fossil fuels, the oil price would go up and thus it would affect overall costs. In future, we may also see some changes in business models where the business owners will add up environmental costs that are today mainly borne by the society or Government. Nevertheless, things will change soon.

To add to this, as your target market is expecting you to take some initiative to improve the environment, it is always wise to contribute. It may not take long for people to find out that someone is actually faking the story about your social initiative. And once they have identified the truth about the initiative, it will take less than minimum time to spread the story across your user base. In addition, once people start doubting you, sales volume is bound to go down.