Sustainable marketing is altruistic marketing.
Traditional marketing looks at the world through the eyes of the company and its bottom line. How does the sale of a product or service benefit us? What can we do to sell more or to more markets in order to grow? How do we beat the competition? Traditional marketing promotes. It’s ego(t)istical.
My Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus defines altruism as unselfishness and a “regard for others as a principle of action; concern for other people”. An altruistic company keeps the interest of other people – what sustainability discourse terms “stakeholders” – ahead of its own. How does the product/service benefit our customers and other stakeholders? How can we meet their needs better? What can we do to lift up all boats? Sustainable marketing builds community. It’s altruistic.
Regard or concern for others don’t exclude benefiting from your own altruistic actions. You are a stakeholder, too. Enter gratitude and reciprocity.
What prompted this post out of the permanent draft vortex was the Customer Experience Matters post “Making customers grateful makes sense”, which reflects on a recent paper in the Journal of Marketing titled “The role of customer gratitude in relationship marketing”. When an employee performs an unexpected action to benefit an individual customer – a surprise gift, say – the customer feels grateful and is likely to reciprocate. Two findings are relevant here.
1.) “The feelings of gratitude are strengthened when the actions are viewed as benevolent and not self-serving for the company.”
The consumer feels gratitude for the company’s action only if the action is perceived as altruistic. If the company’s action is altruistic, it is highly likely to be perceived as such. Motivation is a factor in generating gratitude.
2.) “Gratitude generates short-term feelings of reciprocity that creates an environment for building stronger relationships.”
Reciprocity addresses the feedback aspect of altruism. The company performs an altruistic action, the customers feels grateful, and then emotionally (morally?) obligated to return the favor. By definition, reciprocity is a two-way street, but what goes in either direction must benefit and be relevant to both participants in the exchange.
When done right, consistently, and with honesty, altruistic action generates gratitude generates reciprocity. The process aids relationship building, which can serve to repeat and reinforce the progression over time. Everybody wins.
There are drawbacks, however. Reciprocity is short lived and so must be captured while it lasts. As pointed out in a comment on the CEM post, gratitude-generating actions, which work better if they’re unexpected, may over time create an expectation for repeats or even upgrades (as in, give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile).
Having said that, the drawbacks seem to apply only to random acts of kindness. A one-off, random act of kindness or a gift does nothing in the long run.
It’s not only the action itself that matters. Consistency and context matter, too, perhaps even more. Motivation behind the action, history and depth of the relationship, and the environment in which the action takes place influence the effectiveness of altruistic marketing. To generate consistent reciprocity, you must build a long-term relationship based on consistent, principle-based altruism.
Care to share your experience with a company’s altruistic action? How did you return the favor?
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Image credit: oooh.oooh
