The Up­take of Sus­tain­able Shop­ping

By Jorge Muñiz

If we were to run a sur­vey to un­der­stand the rea­sons that have ac­cel­er­at­ed pub­lic con­cern about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, we would dis­cov­er a col­lec­tion of events that may have cat­alyzed the move to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Whilst Covid-19 would cur­rent­ly rank top of the list, the re­al­i­ty is that the sus­tain­abil­i­ty top­ic has been on the cor­po­rate agen­da for many years now. With the 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), the Unit­ed Na­tions them­selves ar­tic­u­lat­ed 5 years ago that a world­wide col­lec­tive ef­fort is need­ed to se­cure a more sus­tain­able world.

The top­ic how­ev­er is now more main­stream than ever be­fore, and con­sumers seem to have tak­en the lead. When it comes to our in­dus­try alone, and ac­cord­ing to re­search from M1nd-set, 84% of trav­el re­tail and duty-free shop­pers think a greater fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty by man­u­fac­tur­ers has a pos­i­tive im­pact on their per­cep­tion of a brand, whilst 74% feel that a greater fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­creas­es the like­li­hood of them pur­chas­ing a brand.

The height­ened vis­i­bil­i­ty of sus­tain­abil­i­ty ef­forts may well make a big­ger im­pact com­pared to just a cou­ple of years ago. How­ev­er, be­fore go­ing any deep­er, let´s re­vis­it the ba­sics of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Evolution of ESG

The sto­ry of cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty has evolved over the years, go­ing from pure­ly char­i­ty con­tri­bu­tions, to a more com­pre­hen­sive ef­fort. The term ESG bet­ter en­cap­su­lates what is known as Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and in­cludes En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance is­sues.

• Environmental dimensions include a company’s energy use, waste, pollution, natural resource conservation and treatment of animals, as well as the assessment of the environmental risks a company might face and how the company is managing those risks
• Social looks at the company’s business relationships with employees (for example, offering fair working conditions as well as a healthy and safe working environment, promoting diversity and inclusive practices, etc.), suppliers (how the company works to ensure suppliers hold the same values the company claims to hold), communities (charity activities, relationships with the local community)
• Finally, governance includes issues related to the running of the company itself: accounting practices, governance bodies, shareholders rights, guarding against corruption and bribery, legal compliance… these are just a selection of the topics covered under this dimension.

What does Dufry look like in terms of sustainability?

The short an­swer is “We look good!”, but we also have scope to im­prove even more! With­in our in­dus­try, Dufry holds a very ad­vanced po­si­tion. As in­di­cat­ed in issue 37 of Dufry World, we have a clear ESG strat­e­gy which is em­bed­ded in our busi­ness mod­el and that en­ables our com­pa­ny to con­sis­tent­ly ad­vance its sus­tain­abil­i­ty com­mit­ment.

Engaging with the consumer

Dufry is by na­ture a con­sumer-fo­cused com­pa­ny, and all we do has to be geared to giv­ing our cus­tomers a su­pe­ri­or shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence. It´s true that an air­port shop­per be­haves dif­fer­ent­ly when it comes to im­pulse buy­ing, gift­ing, or treat­ing one­self, but not when it comes to sus­tain­abil­i­ty. In fact, re­search shows that when it comes to sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­lat­ed con­sumer be­hav­ior, 64% of con­sumers are will­ing to pay a pre­mi­um price for more sus­tain­able prod­ucts.

This is some­thing that’s very much recog­nised by all man­u­fac­tur­ers, who are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in en­larg­ing their port­fo­lio of sus­tain­able prod­ucts. The gold­en ques­tion is… what makes a prod­uct more sus­tain­able than an­oth­er? Con­tin­u­ing with the above-men­tioned re­search piece from M1nd-Set, the most im­por­tant con­sumer con­cerns about sus­tain­able con­sump­tion in­clude:

1. Buying products that are sustainably sourced, respecting the environment (i.e. Environmental criteria)
2. Buying products that are ethically sourced, respecting social welfare in source markets (i.e. Social)
3. Buying recyclable products (environmental)
4. Buying products that use as little plastic and packing material as possible

Dufry´s plan

Be­yond tak­ing each and every op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove our cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty per­for­mance, as al­ready de­scribed in Dufry World 37, Dufry con­tin­u­ous­ly en­gages with both air­port land­lords and brand sup­pli­ers, join­ing forces to present cus­tomers with what they are look­ing for. In this con­text, there are a num­ber of joint ini­tia­tives in place to im­prove in-store com­mu­ni­ca­tion around sus­tain­abil­i­ty mat­ters and to make them more vis­i­ble in our stores. We will present these ini­tia­tives to you in more de­tail in the next is­sue of Dufry World.

As re­flect­ed in the 2020 Annual Report, Dufry has shared its short and mid­dle term com­mit­ments to ESG, in­clud­ing the phas­ing out of plas­tic bags, train­ing of our staff in the sale of al­co­hol prod­ucts and the track­ing of CO₂ emis­sions as a first step to­wards re­duc­ing our car­bon foot­print.

When it comes to prod­ucts, in­dus­try pow­er­hous­es such as Es­tée Laud­er, L´Ôre­al, L´Oc­c­i­taine en Provence, Di­a­geo - and a long list of many oth­ers - are mak­ing big steps for­ward in this area and Dufry is de­ter­mined to join them on this jour­ney. As the an­tic­i­pat­ed lift­ing of trav­el re­stric­tions brings our cus­tomers back to our stores, it’s a good time get all the el­e­ments ready and to con­tin­ue adapt­ing our of­fer and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to this grow­ing sus­tain­able de­mand. Stay tuned and watch this space!