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Marketing Test
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Contents
Brief Background of Woolworths..............................................................................................3

Environmental Factors Creating the Need for Sustainable Marketing......................................3

Assess the potential impact of sustainability issues on your organization in the future............4

Evaluate the extent to which your chosen organization is currently managing sustainability
within the business.....................................................................................................................5

References..................................................................................................................................7
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The implementations of sustainable strategies have become highly essential for every
organisation to `sustain in the current competitive market as well as be responsible towards
the society. The organisation that has been considered for this report is Woolworths, a food
retailing organisation. This organisation has implemented the sustainable strategies for their
current organisational operations. In this report, a discussion has been laid on the background
of the organisation, the environmental factors that has forced the organisation to implement
the sustainable strategies, assessing the potential impacts of the sustainability issues on the
future of the Woolworths and evaluating to which extent the organisation is managing the
business sustainability.

Brief Background of Woolworths

Woolworth Limited was found in 1924 and is currently known as the Woolworths Group.
The organisation in the initial time was having a store in Imperial Arcade of Sydney. The
organisation has developed themselves them as one of the profound organisations in the
sector of food retail. The segment of Woolworth consists of Australian Food Market,
Australian Supermarket, New Zealand Food and Supermarket, Hotels and Australian
Petroleum Market. Woolworth’s group is mostly famous for their retail services with around
3000 store outlets, 200,000 employees and the current base of customers have expanded to
about 28 millions (Woolworths Group, 2020). The organisation is very well known for its
business strategy that incorporates the sourcing products obtained from the local
manufacturers as well as from the local farmers. The organisation has reflected high efforts
for providing their customers with products as well as services which supports sustainability
initiatives.

Environmental Factors Creating the Need for Sustainable Marketing

The major environmental factors that created the needs for sustainable marketing are Climate
change, energy efficiency, water and food waste.

Climate change: The change in climate along with its impacts on the production of fresh
food is considered as the critical environmental issue that is being confronted by Woolworths.
The Australians are way too much aware regarding the devastating effects that they are
confronting due to drought as well as extreme weather events. Therefore, the organisation is
compelled to reduce the carbon footprint, which in turn will help in reduction to global
warming. There are numbers of regulatory as well as political factors that shape the landscape
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of the climate change that incorporates the requirements regarding the public disclosure of
emissions. The reduction of carbon footprint is considered to be integral for the growth of the
business as it will provide strength to Woolworths for continuing their supply of fresh
products to their customers at a low price.

Energy Efficiency: This factor has been identified as a way to reduce the emission of green
house gas. This environmental factor is considered to be significant for Woolworths Group to
reduce the costs that are associated with the utilisation of energy that are being produced with
the help of fossils fuels as well as the environmental footprints of Woolworths (Woolworths
Group, 2018). Moreover, supermarkets are considered to be the largest contributors towards
the utilisation of electricity and therefore account around 75% of the carbon emissions. Thus
it reflects that the organisation is required to reduce their reliance on the sources of energy,
which are being produced by utilising the materials like fossil fuels which forces the
organisation to contribute more for footprint.

Water: This factor is considered to be essential environmental resources. The food retail
sector relies highly on the water availability. The secure supply of water is considered to be
important for production of fresh food within Australia. 97% of the vegetables as well as
fresh fruit that are being sold within the supermarket directly depend on the local growers as
well as farmer’s livelihood. Therefore, the organisation is having an obligation for not
wasting any water.

Food Waste: The significant reason for which food waste is considered as the environmental
factor is due to the economic consequences of the food waste. Food waste leads to the
landfills which decomposes the lands as well as it also leads to commercial organic
compositing.

Assess the potential impact of sustainability issues on your organization in the future
Sustainability always termed as a challengeable factor for an organisation, as what has been
in the case of the chosen organisation Woolworths, the organisation has focused hard on the
sustainable growth of the business. It has been discussed that from the perspective of the
organisation, Woolworths is one of the largest food chain sectors of Australia that focusing
hard over the safety of the environment and hence the organisation has focused on various
factors such as CO2 emission, product packaging, seafood sustainability and water pollution.
Pili et al., (2017) commented that for an organisation the most important factor is to
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synchronise the environmental factor with the business objectives or the organisational
objectives. This might influence the organisation to maintain the cost of production in the
organisation as well as labour cost. The chosen organisation Woolworths has faced the
challenges while maintaining the environmental factor in the organisation for which the team
has launched some new schemes such as no use of plastic bags and the packaging system.
Along with this, the organisation has launched a campaign to control water pollution. These
targets or CSR plans has increased the cost of production that ruins the sales revenue by 2.3%
in the past two years (Woolworths Group, 2020). The annual report of the organisation has
determined that employees were not in favour of this decision as they have to sacrifice there
on the job time to focus as well as complete CSR goals.

As the organisation has focused on plastic recycling that has put pressure on the operational
team. The operational team now has to recycle the waste and to produce eco-friendly bags for
the customers so that they can replace plastics. CEO of the Woolworths has announced that
recycling and use of the plastic bags create a challengeable situation for the organisation, as
customers did not found the fibre bags useful for them for the next best use. On the other
hand, plastic bags can be reused by the customers for a different purpose (Woolworths
Group, 2020). From the statement, it has been deduced that the chosen organisation
Woolworths has focused on the demand of the customers and the utility of the consumer that
brought a new challenge of creating or producing eco-friendly bags for customers so that that
can be reused by the customers for next best utility or need.

Evaluate the extent to which your chosen organization is currently managing

sustainability within the business
The chosen organisation Woolworths is working over the sustainability plan or project secure
the environment and the satisfaction level of the customers. From the annual report of the
organisation, it has been found that the organisation has focused on the sustainable supply
chain, according to which, the firm producing own tea brands and supplying it to the
customers so that it cannot pressurise the operating team of firm but fulfils the needs of the
customers. the CEO of Woolworths has stated that the organisation is focused on the organic
farming that brings a good opportunity for the farmers as well as environment to promote
environmental factors in the field (Woolworths Group, 2020). The statement has deduced that
if the firm is producing tea products under their control or organic farming plan than it will
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reduce the operating cost as well as supply cost and will help the customers to meet their
necessity products.

Along with this, the firm is working over the new concept of no-use of plastics, according to
which the firm has launched plastic-free straws for drinking or beverage products. The firm is
producing plastic-free straws for coffee products and other beverages products that can be
recycled by the firm after the immediate use (Woolworths Group, 2020). It can be considered
as one of the greatest or else innovative step taken by the firm to protect the environment
from the effect of plastic products. From the annual calculation of 2018, it has been seen that
firm has been able to remove 11.6 million plastic straws from the market in last one year,
instead of which they use paper straws for beverage products that can be easily recycled by
the firm at minimum cost.

Along with this, the firm is working on the recycling of packaging, in which the firm is using
PET labelling packaging to reduce the plastic tonnes in numbers. As per the report the firm
has been able to reduce the plastic tonnes from 843 tonnes to 42 tonnes in the past few years
by using PET labelling (Woolworths Group, 2020). It has deduced that the firm is working
well over the sustainable growth of the organisation in the national as well as international
market.
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References
Pili, S., Grigoriadis, E., Carlucci, M., Clemente, M., & Salvati, L. (2017). Towards
sustainable growth? A multi-criteria assessment of (changing) urban forms.
Ecological Indicators, 76, 71-80.

Woolworths Group 2018, 'Woolworths partners with WWF for a more sustainable future -
Woolworths Group', Woolworthsgroup.com.au, Retrieved June 27, 2019, from
<https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/media/Latest_News/woolworths-
partners-with-wwf-for-a-more-sustainable-future/>.

Woolworths Group. (2020). Retrieved 7 June 2020, from

https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/about-us

Woolworths Group. (2020). Tomorrow. Together. 2018 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT.

Retrieved 7 June 2020, from
https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/icms_docs/195398_2018-sustainability-
report.pdf