Marketing for Sustainable Development

12Mobile Apps and Environmentally Friendly Consumption: Typology, Mechanisms and Limitations

Adeline OCHS¹ and Julien SCHMITT²

¹ Audencia Business School, Nantes, France

² ESCP Business School, Paris, France

12.1. Introduction

Numerous consumer studies, in France and internationally, show an increasing awareness of social and environmental challenges. Even more people are displaying an increasing willingness to adopt consumption behavior that preserves the natural environment (Obsoco 2019). Environmentally friendly consumption refers to “the use of goods and services that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimizing the use of natural resources, so as to not jeopardize the needs of future generations”¹. Here, the notion of “use” is taken in its broad sense and includes not only the actual consumption of products and services, but also the stages that precede (e.g. researching information or purchasing decisions) and follow consumption (e.g. recycling).

Beyond these changes in environmental concerns, post-modern society is also characterized by the digital era that is transforming the relationships that consumers develop with consumption objects and social relationships. Consumers are now hyperconnected, especially through their cell phones, and continuously combine digital and physical channels to reach purchasing decisions. Mobile apps, which can act as “life coaches”, differ from other digital devices because of their “mobiquity”², being both ...