Sustainability in Marketing and Management

Question: Discuss about the Sustainability in Marketing and Management. Answer: Introduction: The field of marketing has evolved over the time and has improved various levels of strategies. The evolution of marketing concepts are divided and discussed through five major concepts that includes production concepts, marketing concepts, selling concepts, product concepts and social marketing concepts. In addition, in this modern era of marketing, it is mandatory to include sustainable criteria into marketing that is the prime need of the era. All the companies must understand the fact that sustainability is not just a mere option but also it has become a requirement. In order to survive in the competitive business environment it has become an obligation for the companies to take sustainable marketing strategies. The concept of sustainability in marketing has increased due to the fact that marketing is not only considered as just a intra-personal needs but also it has extended towards fulfilling the needs of future generations. Therefore, it includes in creating and delivering sus tainable value towards the customer by making a balance between the marketing strategy and distinct customer needs that will be fulfilled after maintaining profitability and ecology (Arora and Walia 2015). According to the researcher, the case study provides sustainable value creation through E-Waste Management. Therefore, it is purely based on the understanding that retailers are one of the vital links between the operation interface and marketing in value creation. The case study also provides enough emphasis on the sustainable value creation be often achieved through good policies, sound processes, and appropriate incentive system across the management process. Sustainable Supply Chain: Sustainable supply chain or supply chain sustainability are one of the most important functions of the organization as it provides the organization towards maintaining its integrity and ensuring that the business run smoothly with the management of operational costs. A sustainable supply chain management consists of social, environmental and economic impacts and their management. It includes of good governance of business practices throughout the life cycle of goods and services. The Primary objective of sustainable supply chain management is to create and grow better long term relationships with various stakeholders, customers while brining new products and services in the market (Ahi and Searcy 2013). Moreover, with the help of sustainable supply chain management most of the organizations protect their long term viability of their business operations and basically secure a social accredit to operate. The journal article provide a detail report of how sustainable supply chain concepts are useful for handling end of life waste management procedures and how they are linked with each other. According to the article, a sustainable organization is a type of organization that contributes towards the social, economical and environmental benefits. An organization can create sustainability of supply chain by creating economic value by nurturing the health of the society they conduct their business (Kidee, Naidu and Wong 2013). Sustainable Value Creation: Sustainable Value Creation is considered to be one of the core business strategies that generally put entire focus on addressing the fundamental social issues with the help of identifying new and scalable resources of competitive advantage. Sustainable value creation helps in generating measurable profit and also provides benefits towards the community Moreover, value creation simply means redirecting business efforts in such a way that it helps in both the ways for the organization like making money as well as empowering communities (Crane et al., 2014). In the journal article it has been observed that how sustainable value creation is been created from E-waste with the help of effective marketing operations and retailer interface. Sustainable value is based on the principle of shared value according to which the companys competiveness and the health of the organization are interdependent on each other. Therefore, it is been observed that the traditional business framework and all the financial tools does not always provide information and due to this reason new and modern tools are arising to support the people of business. In order to cater this deficit one of the most useful tools is sustainable value creation that provides the organization capital to create a value for the profit maximization while ensuring sustainability of the organization capital and value creation ability in the future also (Chandler and Werther 2013). E-Waste Management: Electronic waste is considered to be one of the fastest growing pollutions problems in the world due to the fact that electronic waste consists of a variety of toxic substances that will contaminate the environment and will threaten the life of humans. In order to tackle these adverse situations there is an existence of e-waste management concepts. E-waste management concepts include various tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA), Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA). The primary objective of these concepts is to reduce the number of electronic waste and their key towards success is to develop eco friendly designs of devices, collection of electronic wastes and to recycle electronic materials in a safe way (Laurent et al., 2014). In the journal article, it is been defined that how end of life returns are related to electronic waste management. For example, all the phone users upgrade their phones due to technical obsolescence and most of the users usually abandon their mobile phones when they are not in a working condition. All of this is qualified to call end of life returns of certain products and services and managing of this returns are known as electronic waste management. Traditionally all the manufacturers were not so much concerned about end of life returns and they basically feel irresponsible towards in knowing what happened to their products. Therefore, with the increase the global percentage of electronic waste and implementation of legislative measures it is a very much concern for the manufacturers to respond appropriately towards electronic waste management (Zeng et al., 2013). Marketing-Operations Interface: Marketing and operations are one of the two most influential areas that basically contribute towards the success of any organization. The marketing-operations interface is a platform that focuses on the supply chain management more particularly between the interactions of operations and marketing through a supply chain management framework. The primary goal of this interface is to critically understand that how modern business operations can establish coalition between various functions, operations and marketing so as to attain a desirable profit, strategic competency and market share for the organization (Sale, Mesak and Inman 2017). In the journal article, it has been clearly stated that how marketing-retailers-operations interface framework provides sustainability towards an organization. The framework is basically divided into two parts incentives, policies, and process respectively. The incentives provide economic values whereas policies and procedures added to environmental value for the organization (Mane and Niranjan 2014). Extended Producer Responsibility: Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a waste management strategy that is basically designed to promote the integration of all the environmental related costs that is generally associated with the goods throughout their life cycle. The primary focus of this concept is to take proper initiatives towards the end of use treatment of consumer goods and their aim is to increase the number of product recovery and reducing the amount of electronic waste materials. Thomas Lindquist introduced this concept for the first time in the year 1990 with the help of a report towards the Swedish Ministry (Niza et al., 2014). The report highlighted the importance of extended producer responsibility as it provides extended responsibility of the producer in solving the issues that are related to electronic waste management. The report also mentioned that it is the duty of the producers to manufacture environment friendly products, be responsible until the product whole life cycle, and take steps like recycling and disposal in order to safeguard the environment (Lifset, Atasu and Tojo 2013). In the journal article, it has been stated the importance of extended producer responsibility as it helps towards creating sustainable value creation and it provides legislation for end of life products. Therefore, in order to tackle the needs of waste management concepts extended producer responsibility is one of the very important tools through which success can be achieved in the long run (Gui et al., 2015). Conclusion: The journal article provides a detail discussion regarding sustainable value creation through which E-Waste Management. The journal has discussed all the critical points that are related to electronic waste management and has highlighted various key points that are valuable towards the understanding of sustainable value creation. The five important key points that are been highlighted in the journal article consists of Sustainable Supply Chain, Sustainable Value Creation, End of Life Waste Management concepts, Marketing-operations Interface and Extended Producer Responsibility. According to the researcher, the journal article is very useful, as it has done case study research, financial integration, physical integration and Data Analysis and provides enough discussions to critically analyze the importance of sustainable value creation and how it can be related to Electronic Waste Management concepts. According to the researcher, the journal has fulfilled its target of making the reader understand the importance of electronic waste management in this modern era of business. The future of electronic waste management lies in the hands of producers as long as they understand the importance of waste management concepts and take appropriate steps in order to keep the environment free from electronic wastes. References: Ahi, P. and Searcy, C., 2013. A comparative literature analysis of definitions for green and sustainable supply chain management.Journal of Cleaner Production,52, pp.329-341. Arora, A. and Walia, M., 2015. 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