Sustainability

In recent years, sustainability issues and corporate responsibility have gained increasing attention in research and practice. Not only the needs of different stakeholders such as customers, employees, suppliers, and the society at large, but also the scarcity of resources and the need to preserve them for future generations forces businesses to deal with sustainability issues. Particularly the most important stakeholders, that is, the customers, are becoming more and more sensitive about the ecological and social impact of the products and services they buy. Especially the constantly growing customer group of the so-called „LOHAS“ (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability), with about 5 million households and a market potential of 200-400 billion EUR per year in Germany, highlights the potential of sustainable consumption. Consequently, companies of the for-profit as well as the non-profit sector face the challenge to align economically profitable business with social and ecological requirements to fulfill a responsible and sustainable mission. Recent developments show that taking over this social and ecological responsibility can increase the enterprise value.

However in practice, sustainability measures are often pursued without considering their potential synergies or their contribution to the enterprise value. To address this problem, and to integrate corporate responsibility and the ecological, social, and economic dimension of sustainability into core business, substantial changes are needed in all business areas. Since 2012, the research group value-based CRM intends to contribute to this field amongst others by…

• ... the integration of sustainability and corporate responsibility into CRM, for example in order to win and tie customers that aim for a sustainable lifestyle

• ... risk management with an adequate consideration of all dimensions of sustainability

• ... the development of decision functions that consider the economic dimension of sustainability without neglecting the social and ecological dimension

• ... the design of decision support systems for an integrated and value-based management

• ... the alignment of reporting on sustainability for a differentiated stakeholder management