توسعه محصول منابع محدود : مفاهیم بازاریابی سبز و زنجیره تامین سبز

While academic debates and practical approaches to green marketing have matured over the past few decades, one central conundrum that has remained unresolved has been the trade-off between the higher prices of green products and the objectives of environmental sustainability. In general, it has been observed that green products are priced at a premium to account for their environmentally friendly consumption and use. We argue that resource-constrained product development approaches (alternatively labeled jugaad) that are observed in emerging countries such as China and India have the potential to change the traditional models of green product development. In addition to the competitive advantage that resource-constrained product development approaches provide, we suggest that these practices have sustainability and supply chain benefits. We show that the innovation process relies primarily on frugal engineering that reduces material use (thereby reducing burden on supply chain) and meets green marketing objectives at much lower, and therefore, more affordable prices. We draw out several implications for theory and practice.

Current approaches to green marketing rely on the fact that there exists a segment of customers who would pay a premium for a product that is environmentally friendly, and thus “green” (Elkington, 1994, Iyer, 1999, Menon and Menon, 1997 and Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990). The prospects of a price premium also provide the motivation and the business logic for companies to develop green products and to engage in specific operations and marketing practices, such as recycling, reusing materials, and forming green supply chain alliances (Hawken et al., 1999, Nidumolu et al., 2009 and Porter and van der Linde, 1995). However, the basic premise of a premium for environmentally friendly products has seen several challenges in the recent economic downturn, with consumers cutting back on their green product preferences and returning to traditional low-priced items (Clifford & Martin, 2011). The discussion on green products and green marketing has also been quite muted in the context of business-to-business marketing. Trade-offs between price and environmentally sustainable objectives have been reported here as well, with studies reporting that organizational buyers view recycled products, such as paper, to be of lower quality (Polonsky, Brooks, & Henry, 1998), or think the products are more hype than they are actually green (Ginsberg & Bloom, 2004). Thus, for green marketing to enter the next phase, where green products are the standard to which other products are compared, industrial marketing needs to take a hard look at how to resolve the tradeoffs of green quality and price. We contend that there is potential for green marketing approaches worldwide to gain from the insights developed in customizing products for the rural poor in emerging markets, where the core focus of innovation has been on developing or acquiring technologies, or on altering business model and capabilities, to make products affordable (Prahalad & Mashelkar, 2010). The central thrust of innovations in such contexts is affordability, and a range of alternatives are explored along with several improvisations in order to develop products that fit-in with the consumption context (Prahalad & Mashelkar, 2010). Driven primarily by a resource-scarce environment, innovation approaches in emerging markets attempt to overcome resource constraints while meeting the demand for lower priced products. The result of such innovations, termed as “resource-constrained product development,” (alternatively labeled jugaad) are products that use minimal resources and are affordable to end-customers. This idea of constrained development is now in vogue for other markets and customer segments as well. As a Deloitte Review article points out, external constraints often call for new products and services that ultimately enable competitive differentiation (Chaudhuri, Giffi, Kandaswami, & Singh, 2009). Our thesis is guided by the simple precept that while a resource-constrained product development approach balances costs and other performance objectives, it also enhances environmental sustainability and supply chain efficiencies. Thus, instead of making environmental sustainability the central focus and then making new products that would be priced – at a premium – to niche markets, product development focuses on the needs of the mass market and aims to develop affordable products through explicit consideration of resource constraints. In this process, by utilizing minimal resources, environmental sustainability and supply chain efficiency objectives would also be met. Moreover, such an innovation strategy would be quite impervious to fluctuating economic conditions, since the market is not driven by customers who would be willing to pay premiums. In a recent paper on the marketing function, sustainability, and business-to-business markets, Sharma, Iyer, Mehrotra, and Krishnan (2010) suggest that, in addition to traditional prescriptions of recycling and remanufacturing, better forecasting and build-to-order programs may provide sustainable benefits. They also suggest that there are three major strategies for which marketing's role in environmental sustainability is crucial for achieving superior competitive advantage and financial performance—the reduction of surplus supply of products, reduction of reverse supply, and internal marketing. This paper identifies resource-constrained product development as another facet where green marketing can play an important role in sustainability through reduction in surplus supply and reverse supply of materials. We specifically look at the critical interaction of frugal (or resource-constrained) innovation, green marketing and sustainability, and supply chain efficiencies. The organization of this paper is as follows. In the next section, we outline the basic tenets of resource-constrained product development and contrast it to conventional product development approaches. We then engage in a review of the literature on such development processes and offer a framework examining the imperatives of resource-constrained product development and its impacts on green products and supply chain efficiencies. We then examine the competitive green marketing resource-constrained product development and conclude with suggestions for future research and implications for managers.

By developing and marketing products that better fit environments where resources are scarce and consumers prefer acceptable quality at low prices, RCPD strategies have been proven to be appropriate for emerging markets. Global marketers using conventional product development strategies, along with emphasis on strong brands, aggressive distribution, promotion and sales strategies, and price premiums for higher quality, have often struggled to gain a foothold within the large markets in emerging markets. Emerging market realities include the fact that most customers prefer a product that is “good-enough” as compared to one that is the most sophisticated (Gadiesh, Leung, & Vestring, 2007). RCPD uses the good-enough principle to develop more basic and affordable products that better fit with market and environmental realities. In contrast, conventional product development approaches rely on expanding the basic product to much augmented levels at which higher prices can be obtained, competitive advantages can be secured, and additional market segments can be captured. As represented in Fig. 3, incremental improvements to the product or enhancements upon the base product move the product higher on the price quality line. However, in RCPD strategies, by developing products from the ground up and focusing only on a basic and affordable product, the price quality line is actually a different one. This makes it harder for entrenched firms to compete with those using RCPD approaches.A very important benefit that has not been recognized is that traditional green product development follows the traditional product-development pattern, in that green features are added and higher prices charged. In the case of RCPD, firms develop products that have fewer features, but also use local materials and fewer materials. In this paper, we have elaborated on the specific utility of RCPD strategies for developing green products. Other advantages of RCPD that are rarely discussed are the sustainability and supply chain advantages of the frugal innovations. In this regard, this paper suggests that wider adoption of resource-constrained product development, with its inherent focus on fewer materials and fewer features, will not only provide competitive advantage but will also provide significant sustainability and supply chain benefits. In the examples discussed, the GE machines use fewer materials; Super Religare Laboratories Limited uses less space and fewer machines, and fewer chemicals are thrown away (based on expiration dates); and the hospitals use fewer hospital rooms than competing hospitals in developed countries due to process improvement and fewer complications resulting from surgeries. Clearly, both sustainability and supply chain benefits (local sourcing and fewer materials) are realized. These sustainability and supply chain aspects of RCPD have rarely been discussed in the extant literature. There is now an increasing acceptance that environmental priorities make sound business sense as well (Costanza et al., 1991, Gladwin et al., 1995, Schmidheiny, 1992 and Sharma et al., 2010) and environmental sustainability could contribute to both economic profitability and to competitive advantages (Porter & van der Linde, 1995). We have elaborated the ways in which RCPD strategies could contribute to environmental sustainability. The approaches used are through the maximization of value-addition with the least use of resources, least amount of waste, and least pollution (Lovins, Lovins, & Hawken, 1999). RCPD, with its emphasis on the more critical features while using fewer but local materials, may be the path toward development of green products. RCPD can be readily used in contexts other than emerging markets as well, where firms could focus on the development of basic products with acceptable quality at lower prices, with the sustainability effects obtained through lower resource use, emphasis on recycling and remanufacturing and implementing green supply chains. While we have shown that RCPD approaches could lead to the development of green products, it is not always true that RCPD products would be inherently green. In some instances, the focus on available resources and affordability may in fact, detract from sustainability effects. For example, “jugaad” vehicles used by farmers in North India replace the conventional engine in vehicles with agricultural pumps running on diesel, thereby causing greater environmental damage. However, we contend that such products are often short-lived and in response to temporal demands. Over time, changes in laws and regulations as well as public consciousness of environmental effects decrease the acceptance of such products. We contend that, by and large, RCPD approaches contribute to greater environmental sustainability and market acceptance.