Sustainability in Sales and Marketing
Sustainability in Sales and Marketing – Proving Validity of Alternative Packaging Solutions by Comparing Cost and Environmental Impacts
Mentor: Marco Macoratti, Head of Sustainable Business Solutions at Mondi Group, Vienna
Description: Participants will examine and apply Information Science and Supply Chain Management to develop an Excel tool, supported by internal and external data to compare cost and environmental impact of current packaging with alternative solutions. Typically in CPG companies, these analyses are not interconnected because they are performed by different teams (Finance and Sustainability), thus the decision to change packaging is delayed - while the opportunity cost and the environmental cost rise over time. Sustainability is a top agenda, but lacks perfect information, thus Management needs a simple comparison method based on reliable sources for inductive reasoning and making decisions.
The project seeks to answer these questions:
What external environmental data are publicly available as benchmarks to reliably support the model?
How can we create a tool that pragmatically delivers quality information?
What is the best strategy and tactic to influence decisions with imperfect information in a multi stakeholder set-up?
The work includes weekly tasks related to the questions. The product includes an oral group presentation and a five-page report with information about the process used to answer the questions and our results.