Sustainability Led Marketing - Aramex and Coca-Cola Companies - Essay Example

Sustainability led-marketing involves promoting sustainable behavior of consumers and providing suitable products that lead to economic and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, it also accounts for environmental marketing that involves green marketing and ecological marketing. The social facet or sustainability is also included and includes the employees, and the community that is concerned with equality among people. This involves race, gender and other social biases that may result in people. The socials aspect of sustainable marketing involves ensuring the health and safety of people through provision of a suitable working environment and creation of negative results of the environment for local communities through prevention of environmental pollution. In addition, the company’s social responsibility for sustainability involve alleviation of poverty among individuals either employees or the community and through financial support projects for these individuals (Hartwig, 2012).

On the other hand, environmental dimension it involves the company making important decisions concerning the environment through the control of the life cycle of the products. This involves production, consumption, and disposal of the products in a manner that does not affect the environment. This may involve green marketing, green consumerism and recycling of the products or ensuring production of market friendly products. However, other companies may be involved in greenwashing activities that involve pretense of production of the environmentally friendly products whereas they produce the products that are not market friendly. The responsibility of the company at ensuring economic sustainability involves ensuring that the natural resources that are a source of the raw materials are not depleted. The companies under discussion involve Aramex and Coca-Cola companies.

Aramex

Aramex sustainability fits the goal of the company that is creating long-term value for its investors by becoming a company of choice for its stakeholders. The sustainability opportunity of the company fits its corporate culture, for innovation, growth, and development. Furthermore, the sustainability goes hand in hand with the promotion of economic development and fits the understanding of the role of society. Moreover, it is suitable for the company’s need for urgent elimination of the harmful products on the environment. The most developed corporate responsibility for the company involves sustainability of the economic sector. This includes training to its employees that ensures that they have gain competence and skills that could earn them more income (Hartwig, 2012). These involve the managers of the company attending Wharton Business School for studying development programs, customer service training for executives and service employees. Aramex also offers equal employment opportunities without biases in terms of gender, ethnic groups, disabilities, or color. In addition, the company provides equal opportunities for women. This is a major effort for the company in social sustainability because the location within which the company operates discriminates women and does not consider them as equal beings. This belief discourages women from seeking employment opportunities. However, with the provision of equal opportunities for the women and equal pay the company encourages them and thus promoting social sustainability (Ikerd, 2013). This is also reflected in the global workplace conditions in which the company also promotes equality in the work place. The company collaborates with the local authorities in ensuring legal requirement for the company is met but at the same time ensuring that, the rights of the workers are safeguarded. Payment of salaries is done on equal merit that though it may differ throughout different countries that is negotiated by with the employees to ensure their satisfaction. The salaries are negotiated with a flexible Aramex HR department that ensures that is aware of the economic status of different countries. The salaries are often provided to motivate employees and retain them.

Moreover, satisfaction is ensured through, provision of health insurance. Most of the governments where the company operates provide health insurance. However, at regions where it is not provided the company provides the benefits. Furthermore, job security and safety is provided through training in order to retain the employee turnover. This turnover is caused due to the problem of finding competent individuals to suit the fast growth of the company. The company also ensures health and safety management systems through training of employees regarding safety measures. The health and safety working group and distribution of health and safety stations ensures aggressive follow up of performance gains of the employees. There are also measures to reduce road accidents that include installation of the modern tracking systems, which has ensured elimination of accidents. The fleet management system is also in place and that alternatively tracks the accidents involved with the company fleet.

Sustainability of the environment is provided by the need for ensuring safety in the cities. The measure ensures reduction of noise pollution form the motor vehicles. This is because the company’s local distribution centers are concentrated in the urban centers. This also results from rapid growth of urban centers. The increased noise pollution results from addressing the challenge of emissions by making morning deliveries (Wilson, 2012). The morning deliveries ensure that traffic congestion is avoided during the rush hours. However as a result this results in creating a lot of noise in the morning around the company’s operation centers. Noise management has been reduced in some places by regulating the company’s operations. For example, the company relocated its offices from densely populated areas in Jeddah, into less densely populated areas due to complaints of the community. Control of noise pollution is however a challenge because the effects of noise are inevitable. Relocations is an expensive move but Aramex tries to balance the interests of the shareholders and the demand for the well-being of the society. Furthermore, safe and courteous driving should be reinforced in areas that relocation is not possible yet they are highly populated (Belz & Peattie, 2013). This includes Abu Dhabi where there are many complaints from people due to the company’s risk of motorcycles on pedestrians. In order to manage such a challenge, the management provides warning to the couriers and tracking them. Necessary action is taken against those who ignore the rules. Initiatives have also been developed in order to enhance safety. For example, the company vehicles have stickers that are safety minded. These stickers ask the public to comment on the driving of the company vehicles (Kassabian, 2015). Below the stickers there are phone numbers of the company in which individuals informs the company on the unsafety driving of the vehicle. Furthermore, as mentioned above the company also reduces traffic congestion by which directly influences the company’s performance by reducing the costs of delivery and time. The first strategy involves making deliveries early in the morning to avoid the rush hour. Furthermore, the vehicle tracking system which makes use route optimization technology that informs the driver on the best route to take and when to take in order to avoid traffic congestions. The other way of reducing traffic involves use of alternative types of vehicles and transport means (Balakrishnan, 2015). Making use of waterways and trains where possible, to avoid the traffic and noise pollution, can reduce the extensive use of road transports on major cities. This is practiced in Dubai.

Furthermore, sustainability marketing is enhanced by reduction of emissions. The emissions resulting from carbon, nitrogen and other harmful emissions from vehicles result in smog in the cities. Encouraging the use of unleaded fuel, the introduction of hybrid vehicles and retrofitting of vehicles enhances reduction of carbon emission. This is possible through service innovation.

Coca-Cola Company

The company ensures the safety of water through water stewardship, sustainable packaging, management of energy, and climate protection. The company community programs enhance healthy support of the watersheds, and balance water in the production process. The corporate responsibilities include conservation of the natural resources and protection of the climate. The major sustainability issues are energy, waste reduction, and packaging. The bottling partner of the company called the Coca-Cola Enterprises targets reduction of carbon in all operations of the company by 15 percent by 2020. This is achievable through making energy savings, like installation of energy saving facilities that are also efficient like use of LED for lighting on fridges. Furthermore, emissions are reduced by use of more efficient storage (Zara, 2014). On the other hand, the manufacturing sector ensures that waste products are efficiently disposed and recycling done where possible. The company also focuses on reducing carbon footprint that represents high percentage of the carbon. This occurs through minimizing the amount of the material that is used in manufacturing the bottles. This ensures making the bottles as thin as possible. Furthermore, the company has introduced the plastic bottles for recycling. Unlike the former glass bottles that create an environmental problem they could be recycled and used to manufacture other related products like polythene bags. The company also encourages consumers to promote recycling of the bottles by collecting and delivering them to any close recycling company.

Moreover, the company also suggests that its glass bottles have 37 percent of the recycled glass and more than 5o percent of aluminum that is also recyclable. The company has also been reported to manufacture bottles that are completely recycled known as PlantBottle. The bottle has 30 percent of plant material. However, the evidence for the PlantBottles to be eco-friendly is not indicated anywhere. This has resulted to the company being accused of greenwash. Saugmandsgaard Henrik who reported that the company’s description of the bottle does not represent the true content of the material brought the discovery into the attention of the public. Henrik accused the company for using marketing tricks for like the use of plant in their claimed recyclable product as well as an arrow logo indicating that the bottles are recyclable. However, Henrik said that there were no documents to support PlantBottle’s have a reduced carbon footprint. The product was released in 2009, in the climate change summit of Copenhagen. However, there have been complaints from different companies claiming that the product advertised by Coca-Cola Company was not recyclable and brought increased pollution to the environment. Besides, environmental groups like the Danish environmental group blasted the company for greenwashing giving reason for the company’s lack of proof.

Furthermore, due to complain about the health effect of the Coca-Cola company products, the company has engaged in the production of other products. This follows to the claim that the high sugar content of the soft drinks manufactured by the company is unhealthy especially for the obese individuals.

Comparing the sustainability of the two companies, Aramex focuses more on socials element. These include support for equality of individuals through avoidance of all sorts of biasness, related to the place of work like disabilities and gender. The company also ensures that there is equality in terms of wages irrespective of gender and thus empowering women and ensuring their satisfaction. The company also provides health insurance in areas where it is not provided as well as safety measures. On the other hand, Coca-Cola Company stresses on the environmental issues, as indicated by its goals of alleviating environmental pollution. The company claims to have manufactured recyclable plant bottles known as PlantBottle which is however, considered as a greenwash, due to lack of evidence.

The pollution caused by Aramex comes from the vehicles and the transportation at large including noise pollution and emissions of pollutant gases. Coca-Cola company main pollution comes from the industry, though transportation also results in significant pollution effects. The bottles of for the company also cause a lot of pollution to the environment. This is due to the unrecyclable nature of the bottles. In addition, Aramex provides proper solution for reducing and eliminating the problems related to sustainability. However, Coca-Cola Company does not provide clear solution to the sustainability of the problems. Instead, the company is accused of the greenwash that is the act of pretending to promote environmental control but at the same time getting involved in the use of the material pollutants.