WWF-Singapore: Promoting Sustainable Seafood

Description

In February 2021, the responsible seafood program officer for World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore (WWF-Singapore) was looking to encourage a collective change in the consumption of sustainable seafood. Promoting sustainable seafood in Singapore, however, had not been easy. Due to cultural influences and the nature of seafood trading, driving a change in the sourcing and consumption of seafood among stakeholders required significant effort and creativity. Identified stakeholders were generally either slow in acting or unresponsive. With each party pushing the responsibility to another, the challenge facing the program officer and WWF-Singapore’s market transformation team was how to overcome this deadlock of inertia. WWF-Singapore believed that it was necessary to understand and address each stakeholder separately, as stakeholders required specific communication messages and support to help them make a change. However, with limited resources, WWF-Singapore had to be strategic in deciding who to target and how.

Learning Objective

This case can be used in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on marketing or sustainability. It is written from the perspective of a non-governmental organization, and the “product” is a message instead of a traditional product or service; as such, the case provides a refreshing contrast to conventional marketing cases. The case can also be used in a consumer behaviour class to examine the factors that need to be addressed for WWF-Singapore to encourage the consumption of sustainable seafood. The instructor may also use it in a communications class to focus on the campaigns and outreach activities that WWF-Singapore can embark on, using the field interviews and survey results provided in the case. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:

• Think about business as it relates to the environment and corporate social responsibility.
• Evaluate the value of integrating sustainability into business strategy and whether doing so could contribute to competitive advantage.
• Analyze the challenges of managing multiple stakeholders with different priorities.
• Apply traditional marketing concepts (such as target marketing) to a non-governmental organization with a public message on environmentalism and social responsibility as a product.
• Recommend marketing strategies to persuade stakeholders.

Keywords

Consumer behavior marketing research sustainability marketing Target Marketing