Sustainable Marketing: HP

HP is one of the largest manufacturers of printers, cartridges, and inks nowadays. In fact,

the distribution of its products may be traced and expanded up to the offices on the farthest parts

of the world. Hence, it may be said that HP likewise has the largest and most diverse consumer

population in all of the ink and printer producers in the world (HP, 2009). It may never be

disputed that the size and the characteristics of the consumer population of HP poses advantages

to the company like profitability and more exposure to internalization. However, at the same

time, this characteristics poses risks and several challenges for the top management of the

company to solve on their own.

One of the more common practice of the companies nowadays to evaluate the market

where they are hoping to or currently operate in is through a market research. This type of

research was done by professionals and funded heavily by the companies as a part of their

research and development activities in order to determine the factors and the business

environment which will affect their success. Further, one of the most important factors in

business is the consumer behavior which could be easy or very hard to read. Like most

companies, the necessity to identify the consumer behavior are faced by HP.

For the purpose of this paper, the customers of HP may be classified into three namely:

businesses, households, and offices. The first classification are the other businesses who are

aiming to partner with HP for them to distribute to smaller stores or to the customers directly.

The strategy of these businesses may serve as their behavior.

Oftentimes, B2B transactions face the situation of having the smaller business, the

retailer in this regard, usually demand for a lower price or a larger discount for the products that
they are going to sell. However, the latter two classifications make the market targeting efforts of

the company very tricky and unpredictable.

Nowadays, companies and individuals alike develop or acquired a viewpoint which

support social justice. One of the more prevalent viewpoint among the entities nowadays is

environmentalism tantamount to sustainability where the environment must be conserved and

protected to supply for the needs of the future and the present generations. This is also true in

case of the businesses as they integrate environmentalism and sustainability in their corporate

social responsibility and business ethics (Kotler & Keller, 2012).

It was previously argued that the actions of HP towards sustainability is genuine and it

generates positive benefit to the company and to the environment due to the production of eco-

friendly printers, recyclable cartridges, and conservation of paper. Further, it was described in the

preceding paragraph how the entities, natural persons or not, are leaning towards sustainability.

Considering this premise, it may be said that the sustainability efforts of the company is very

compatible as to the situation and to the consumer behavior.

Such strategy by HP to promote sustainability and the protection of the environment seem

to be adjusting to the consumer behavior and not the other way around. This marketing strategy

or perspective manifested by HP is the contemporary approach which is consumer based

(Levinson & Horowitz, 2010).

 References

Hewlett Packard (2009). Official HP Global Citizenship Report of 2009 [pdf]. Retrieved from
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/pdf/fy09_brochure.pdf

Kotler, P. & Keller, L. K. (2012) Marketing Management. 14th ed. Pearson Education Limited.

Levinson, J.C. & Horowitz, S. (2010). Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. John Wiley & Sons.