INCENTIVES
51) Retailers can also help to encourage sales
of high-performance environmental products (contributing also,
perhaps, to their own overall sales figures) by using incentives
to reward the purchases of products in a particular band, or awarded
a particular certification. These could be price incentives (Tesco
found that halving the price of energy-efficient light bulbs quadrupled
their sales),[80] special
offers, or rewarding certain purchases with extra loyalty points.
Retailers should be encouraged to use incentives to increase sales
of environmentally certified goods. Even if these special offers
are only of a short duration they could still play an important
role in raising awareness and changing purchasing habits. Tesco
told us how their actions had contributed to the expansion of
organic produce:
People will make greener choices if we give them
the right information, opportunity and incentive. By expanding
our range and promoting organic products through green Clubcard
points and point of sale information, buying organic has become
much more mainstream, with one in three customers putting at least
one organic item in their trolley. We now have over 1200 own brand
organic products and our organics business is growing twice as
fast as our main food business.[81]
While individual environmental certifications may
struggle to engage consumers on an equal scale to the organic
movement, the transfer of organic produce to the mainstream looks
like an impressive example of the power retailers wield in supporting
certification schemes. Retailers could also look at the way loyalty
card schemes could be used to draw attention to labelled products,
by for example, offering additional reward points.
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