Combination of Sustainable Supply Chain Management and Green Marketing: Customer Expectations in Furniture Retail

Abstract: Sustainable supply chain management contributes significantly to make a product more sustainable, like by the use of raw materials from more sustainable, decrease in carbon footprint due to lighter material weight or increased transport efficiency and new technologies, or recyclability. With the emergence of an increasing demand for sustainable performance in the corporate world, and thus more sustainability communication, surprisingly sustainable supply chain or logistics related information is rarely included into a green marketing strategy. This research examines to which extent a customer values sustainable supply chain related information about a product or a company in retail furniture. Motivation is fill the mentioned gap in academic research that stresses a missing link between sustainable supply chain management and green marketing. The research is conducted to provide advice whether or not a customer communication strategy for sustainability is needed for the furniture retailer IKEA Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG at the retail store Hamburg-Moorfleet. It respects which information are interesting for the customer and through which medium it shall be communicated. The 6Ps Hub-and-Spoke Integration Model provided by Liu, et al. (2012) forms basis for a customer survey executed at the retail location and online in order to examine the customer´s attitude towards green supply chain management related information about products or the company while purchasing furniture. The analysed data disclosed a profound interest in such information on product level specifically about material origin, recyclability and reverse logistics, and customers´ own green benefits. Such information ought to be communicated prefereably in form of a product tag, as poster or on the webpage.