Major Unilever Research: Potential untapped opportunity of €966 billion out of a €2.5 trillion total market for sustainable goods – 20,000 adults from five countries
According to a new, international study by Unilever, of 20,000 adults from five countries – Brazil, India, Turkey, the United Kingdom and United States – a third of consumers (33 percent of those surveyed) would choose to buy from sustainable brands, i.e. brands they believed to be socially and environmentally beneficial.
Key findings include:
- This trend (purpose-led purchasing) is more noticeable among consumers in emerging markets, as compared to developed ones: 53 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and 78 percent in the United States said they felt better when purchasing sustainable products, compared to 88 percent in India and 85 percent in Turkey and Brazil.
- Over one in five (21%) of respondents said they would actively choose brands provided these brands made their sustainability features clearer, with both their packaging and marketing. This means that a possible unexploited opportunity of €966 billion out of a €2.5 trillion total market for sustainable goods is out there, for brands that will choose to make their sustainability credentials clear.
Unilever’s own financial performance testifies to the scale of the aforementioned opportunity: among the company’s hundreds of brands, Unilever’s Sustainable Living brands (which integrate sustainability into both their purpose and products) grew 30 percent faster than the rest of the business, accounting for nearly half of Unilever’s growth in 2015.
According to Keith Weed, Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer, this research “confirms that sustainability isn’t a nice-to-have for businesses Tweet This!”. “In fact,” he continues, “it has become an imperative. To succeed globally, and especially in emerging economies across Asia, Africa and Latin America, brands should go beyond traditional focus areas like product performance and affordability. Instead, they must act quickly to prove their social and environmental credentials and show consumers they can be trusted with the future of the planet and communities, as well as their own bottom lines”.
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