The Myth of the Sustainable Consumer

Sustainability has become a powerful driver of consumer behavior. People are changing what they consume, how they consume, and how they lead their day-to-day lives, motivated by a concern for sustainability. Our research has identified a consumer-driven megatrend that holds tremendous strategic opportunity for companies if they change how they think of consumer preferences for sustainable options.

The belief that there is only one type of sustainable consumer fails to recognize the diversity of consumer preferences. The stereotypical sustainable consumer who has an intense passion for all things sustainable and a high willingness to pay for sustainable goods and services across all categories accounts for only a small portion of the world’s consumers. Sustainability is now a present and influential factor in how most consumers make their lifestyle and purchasing decisions. But the influence of sustainability on consumers is not uniform, neither in its intensity nor its extent.

To understand these differences and make them actionable, we conducted two core studies on consumers in North America and Europe and segmented them by performing a cluster analysis based on two dimensions (see “The Research”):

• Their commitment to sustainability. Each consumer responded to a number of specific purchasing situations for 19 product categories.1 For each category — for example, apparel — they ranked the importance of value drivers from a list we provided. The number and type of value drivers depended on the category but always included price, quality, brand, and environmental sustainability. The measure of an individual’s commitment to sustainability is the number of times they ranked environmental sustainability among their top-five buying criteria across the categories they rated.
• Their relative willingness to pay more. We asked each study participant whether they would be willing to pay less, the same, or more for a sustainable alternative within a certain product category.