Business Marketing and Sustainability

Silent Business Partner

A partner that contributes capital to a business but that is not involved in day-to-day operations.

KPI key performance indicator

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages.

(KPI) Key Performance Indicator

A performance measure that companies collect to track the success of a particular activity.

Early Adopters

A person (or group) who embraces new technology or buys products or service before most other people do

Marketing Mix

A planned mix of the controllable elements of a product's marketing plan commonly termed as the four Ps (product, price, place, and promotion).

Control Technology

A pollution control standard required by the US Clean Air Act. The EPA determines control technologies and pollution limits in this standard.

SA8000

A popular voluntary certification standard for decent labor conditions. As of 2010, 2,700 facilities in 62 countries with over 1.6 million employees had been certified.

Political Action Committee

A private group organized to elect political candidates or promote a particular policy or political cause.

Normalization

A process in data analysis where factors that impact a KPI are removed to allow for insightful comparison and evaluation.

Benchmarking

A process of comparing an organization's business process and performance measures to industry best practices.

Regulation

A rule issued by an executive authority or regulatory agency of government that has the same force and effect as actual law

Metrics

A set of measurements that quantify results. In a business context, they typically quantify performance toward specific business goals.

Tragedy of the Commons

A situation where different parties share a common good (such as open public land), and acting independently in their own self-interest, they will ultimately overexploit and deplete or destroy the shared resource.

Policy Instrument

A specific type of public policy action

Peformance-based Management

A systematic approach to improving the effectiveness of an organization through an ongoing process of measurement, collection, review, analysis, action, and communication

Cradle to Grave

A term used in life cycle thinking that represents the consideration of a specific entity or activity from the process of activities leading to its inception to its disposal.

Ecological Threshold

A tipping point where the stresses on an ecosystem exceed its capacity to absorb them and feature a major loss of biodiversity and natural resource health and quality

Consumer Packaged Goods

A type of good that is consumed every day by the average consumer. The goods that compose this category are ones that are typically replaced frequently, compared to those that are usable for extended periods of time.

The Four P's

Combination of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion that encompass the marketing mix.

grassroots/bootstrap promotion and marketing

Combines some of the different promotional approaches in a focused, creative, and low-cost way that is often local or community based. It can be particularly useful for start-up ventures. It uses public relations (such as media stories), blogs, social media, and event planning and participation to drive qualified leads to company websites and physical locations for purchases.

Super Greens

Consumers dedicated to buying products and services with commitment to the highest sustainability standards and practices. They represent about one in six consumers.

(RFQ) Request For Quotation

Document used in soliciting price and delivery quotations that meet minimum quality specifications for a specific quantity of specific goods and/or services. ____ are usually not advertised publicly, and are used commonly for (1) standard, off-the-shelf items, (2) items built to known specifications, (3) items required in small quantities, or (4) items whose purchase price falls below sealed-bidding threshold. Suppliers respond to a ____ with firm quotations, and generally the lowest-priced quotation is awarded the contract.

Ecological Footprint

Measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions.

Triple Bottom Line

Measuring a company's impact on people, planet, and profit (bottom line).

Systems Approach

Systems are made up of components that work together for the overall objective of the whole. The systems approach is simply a way of thinking about these total systems and their components.

Market Segmentation

Targeting audiences into homogenous groups according to demographics, psychographics, or behavioral or geographical characteristics.

Continuous Improvement

A management philosophy of ongoing effort in improving an organization's products, services, or processes. Often improvement is based on many incremental changes as opposed to radical overhaul.

(SPI) Sustainable Peformance Indicator

A metric that measures an economic, social, or ecological performance area in a business.

Six Sigma

A business management strategy that seeks to improve the quality of business processes by reducing the causes of defects in reducing variability. The strategy was developed by Motorola in 1981 and relies on quality management and statistical methods. The strategy is most commonly seen in manufacturing environments.

Corporate Social Responsibility

A business model where societal impact is considered in business decision making. It shifts the focus from only considering the financial impact on the company when making decisions to including societal and environmental impacts. This business model shares many similarities to the business model of sustainability for companies.

Value Proposition

A business or marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service.

Innovation

A change in a product offering, service, business model, or operations that meaningfully improves the experience of a large number of stakeholders.

Garbage In Garbage Out

A common saying in business reflecting that the quality of an analysis is only as good as the information that is used in the analysis.

Financial Sustainability

A company is generating positive cash flow or is profitable, meaning that its revenues are expected to exceed its costs. This allows the company to sustain business operations with the same or greater assets and resources.

External Costs

A cost experienced by a party that is not directly involved in a private market transaction.

Consumer Target Market

A defined set of consumers, who are particularly interested in a product or market, would have access to it, and are able to purchase it. Often referred to as a target audience.

Creative Destruction

A description of the overall lifecycle of business in which technologies, goods, and services are constantly being replaced by new technologies, goods, and services with the result of making the economy stronger and society better off.

Public Good

A good where individual consumption does not reduce its availability to others and no one can be effectively excluded from its use (i.e., clean air to breathe).

Eco-Label

A label on a product that conveys sustainability related information to the customer. Typically environmental attributes of the product are highlighted, but _______ can also include social information.

Stakeholder Approach

A management approach that takes into account the views of all the stakeholders of the business and not just the owners. The goal of this approach is to provide products or services that better meet customer needs and also prove the corporate citizenship of the company.

Life Cycle

A view of a process from its beginning to its end.

Marketing Plan

A written plan, which is well integrated with the company's vision, containing objectives, strategies, and tactics to be used to meet a company's marketing goals. The marketing plan is typically done yearly.

Policy Lever

Actions that engage the public and private sectors and other stakeholders.

Macroeconomy

Activities and interactions of the entire overall economy as opposed to individual business activities.

Millenials

An abbreviation for millennial generation, it is a term used by demographers to describe a segment of the population born between 1980 and 2000, a slightly narrower and younger subsegment of the Generation Y demographic group.

Soft Market Entry

An approach for entering a new market by testing the market on a small scale, learning from the experience, and adjusting business approach prior to a wide-scale market entry.

Watershed

An area of land where all water drains into the same water system.

Neoliberalism

An economic view that the private sector, not government, should determine economic and political priorities. This view emphasizes the private sector, open global trading markets, and tax reform.

Brand

An image in the consumer's mind for a particular product or service. It is defined by a perception, good or bad, which consumers or prospects associate with a particular product or service.

Mature Industry

An industry that has been in existence for a long period of time featuring many competitors and relatively low profit margins.

Non Governmental Organization

An organization that is not a private company and does not have formal affiliation or representation with government. These groups often try to impact private business behavior either directly or indirectly by being influential in shaping public policy.

Stakeholders

Any person, group, or organization affected by an organization's actions. For businesses, it can include owners and investors, employees, customers, suppliers, and all members of society affected by the organization.

Intrapreneurship

Applying entrepreneurship in an existing organization.

Interest Group

Associations of individuals or of organizations that form to advance a common political, economic, or social agenda.

Lobbying

Attempts to use information, research, or stakeholder opinion to influence governmental policy by an individual or organization.

Smart Grid

Electricity distribution system that uses real-time useful (smart) information to influence the use of energy. The goal is to minimize peak demand and overall energy use.

Renewable Energy

Energy produced by natural resources that are replaced relatively quickly. Renewable energy resources include biomass, hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, ocean thermal, wave action, and tidal action. In 2009, approximately 8 percent of all energy consumed in the United States was from renewable resources.

Radical Transparency

Ensuring everything a company does is completely transparent and visible to the consumer and stakeholders.

Sustainability

In the natural world, sustainability is the characteristic of a healthy, diverse ecosystem to endure over time. In terms of our society, sustainability is a state of human satisfaction and prosperity that exists from generation to generation brought on through the balanced interaction of society, environment, and economics.

Social Entrepreneur

Individuals who act as an agent of change for the society. They take innovative approaches to existing systems to develop sustainable solutions for the purpose of changing society for the better.

Sustainable Marketing

Involves developing and promoting products and services that meet consumer and business user needs utilizing society's natural, human, and cultural resources responsibly to ensure a better quality of life now and for future generations to come

Green Marketing

Marketing activities aimed at taking advantage of the changing consumer attitudes toward more sustainable principles. Green marketing companies seek to go above and beyond traditional marketing by promoting environmental core values in the hope that consumers will associate these values with their company or brand.

Recession of 2008-09

One of the most severe recessions or contraction of the US economy. It officially began in December 2007, lasted eighteen months ending in June 2009. Almost nine million jobs were lost in this recession.

(ITB) Invitation to Bid

Oral or written invitation to prospective suppliers to submit a bid on materials or services. _____ is only a solicitation, and does not qualify as an offer because the party making it does not wish to enter into a binding agreement without further negotiations.

Certification

Process by which an organization undergoes an assessment or audit by a third-party organization to verify it has met relevant minimum standards.

Social Change

Process in which values, attitudes, and institutions of society are changed.

Market Share

Percentage of a defined market (in terms of total revenue or total number of customers) captured by a service or product provider.

Sustainability Data

Quantitative information derived from the business activity of an organization that is used to create social or environmental metrics. Examples include annual water usage, records of worker harassment complaints, sales revenue, and employee wages and benefits.

Generation Y

Refers broadly to the demographic cohort born between 1978 and 1995. The group is viewed as tech savvy and reliant on new media and digital technology. Generation Y and millennials are the children of the post-World War II baby boomer generation.

Transparency

Refers to openness, communication, and accountability. For sustainable businesses, it involves ready access to important information about an organization's economic, ecological, and social impacts.

Strategic

Relating to the actions of an organization taken to help it fulfill its intended purpose.

Middle Greens

Representing about two-thirds of consumers, these people have good green intentions but are not dedicated to buying only green products and services.

(VAR) Value Added ReSeller or Retailer

Retailer who assembles, augments, modifies, and repackages a good and/or service to suit the individual buyers' needs. EX: Computer industry _____ _____ ______ who add custom hardware and software applications, support services, maintenance contracts, training, etc., are better known as system integrators. Also called _____ _____ retailer.

Ecosystem

The "web" or network of the interaction of living and nonliving factors in a specific geographic area

Public Policy

The actions and decisions taken by government in regards to a particular issue or set of issues.

Insight

The capacity to grasp the true nature of a situation.

System Boundary

The defining of what is and is not included in a life cycle.

Channel Marketing

The directing of promotional efforts at specific links or levels (distributor, wholesaler, retailer) in a channel of distribution.

Baseline

The initial level of performance at which an organization, process, or function is operating upon which future performance will be measured.

Promotion

The marketing communication tools and tactics that a company uses to promote and market their product, such as advertising, public relations, social media, personal selling, and event marketing, among others.

Accountability

The obligation that an organization takes on to ensure that it meets its responsibilities.

Downstream

The portion of the value chain that plays a role in a later step in the product life cycle past the producing organization itself. This can include the distribution, use, or disposal of goods.

Upstream

The portion of the value chain that plays a role in the supply chain of the producing organization. This can include extraction and transportation of raw materials.

Green Washing

The practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, or technology.

Greenwashing

The practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, or technology.

Private Market Transactions

The purchase or sales of goods and services between businesses and other businesses or consumers

Carbon Footprint

The total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an organization, event, product, or person.

Symbiotic Relationship

Typically a biological term, but in a sustainable business perspective, it refers to organizations interacting in a positive way with its environment, contributing to sustainability.

Eco-efficiency

World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The council definition is "competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life while progressively reducing environmental impacts of goods and resource intensity throughout the entire life cycle to a level at least in line with the earth's estimated carrying capacity.

GAAP

generally acceptable accounting principles