Yesterday, Target Corporation announced that their stores will no longer sell farm-raised salmon. They said they’re doing it to help preserve the health of the salmon species. It’s one of a number of socially conscious initiatives by Target: Last spring, Target featured organic fashions. Target now sells what they call green-friendly home products along with more than 700 organic food items. And they say that environmentally sustainable merchandise with a designer’s touch will be appearing later in 2010.
Even if you don’t work for Target, you might be planning your own sorts of socially conscious initiatives. But how to measure the payoff? The answer is to analyze results not just for those products where you’re touting your contributions to improving the world, but instead for overall business performance. Socially conscious initiatives help draw today’s consumers into your store, but there’s a good chance they’ll end up buying products which aren’t the most environmentally friendly or manufactured with fair trade practices.
The presence of socially conscious products frequently makes it more likely the customer will purchase products that do not embody social consciousness. It is as if having chosen the store is enough to satisfy the values. Studies at City University of New York, Loyola College, and Duke University suggest that even when this sort of thing doesn’t occur within the same shopping trip, it can occur over subsequent shopping trips. That is, if someone purchases a socially conscious item on this trip, they become more likely to purchase next time an item that shows little attention to social consciousness.
The lesson? Be ethical, but stock enough items to allow customers to choose how much attention they want to pay to social consciousness. If all you have is wild-caught salmon, you’ll miss out on some sales to people seeking the farm-raised.
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