Re-writing Theatrical Scenes-creating a Green Shopping Environment

The French Retailer pivoting its attention towards trading styles by fostering their customers more like a child and attempting to make this planet a green home. Today, there are a lot of sustainable marketing practices that are been taken up by the marketers. Some of them are eco-friendly packaging, using eco-friendly raw materials and since few years a new trend – Eco-friendly stores has come up. This research throws light on the same and how are the organizations coming up with this concept. Taking this into consideration, companies like Walmart, Starbucks and to some extent body shop, have started contributing in this new change where an introduction to sustainable marketing practices helped these stores to go eco-friendly. They have taken efforts to change their roots green by adopting these practices.This research focuses on critically examining the sports store on the outskirts of Pune-Decathlon, a case study Problem StatementLarge number of small scale retailers have failed to acquire eco-friendly practices and hence, we are trying to identify the ways in the Decathlon has implemented eco-friendly practices.

Introduction

An Eco-Friendly Store. World Environment Day is celebrated on 5th of June every year. It is the United Nation's principal vehicle for encouraging awareness and action for the protection of our environment. For almost five decades it has been raising awareness and driving change. But, these things need to be implemented on everyday basis to conserve the nature. Eco-friendly Retail stores, thus, are very good examples of being successful in doing so.Complete sustainable store is a hard thing to achieve, but through environmentally considered designs, the eco-friendly measures can be carried out. Improvements in mechanical and electrical equipment and the standardisation of sustainable technology ground source have contributed to significant reductions in the environmental depletion.

Characteristics of an Eco-Friendly Store

1. LED Lighting in the store.
2. Efficient use of water (especially, while cleaning).
3. White roofs, to avoid the need of A/C for long (white reflects heat).
4. Daylight harvesting.
5. Heat reclamation.
6. Smart irrigation systems in case of Agri products.
7. Building materials that do not harm nature and less harm is done to the environment during the process.
8. Eco-friendly warehousing practices

Relevance of The Topic

Ever since the effect of Globalisation in 1991, the mass consumption of natural resources has increased. Today, if not the businesses, the consumers are conscious about the product they use, and how it has reached the market. The extraction of natural resources is done by the Corporates and by the consumers, indirectly. The need of sustainable marketing has grown because of this very chain. The firms are now consumer centric. This, they can do through a lot of ways and we are focussing on the retailers. There are numerous retail outlets in in urban areas. The retail outlets, being large in numbers, lead large amounts of aggregate wastefulness.

The Retail Outlets Waste:

• Water
• Electricity
• Packaging material
• Human resource productivity
• Raw materials
• Paper
• Chemicals (Used for cleaning)

The sustainable marketing practices can effectively provide us a substitute method that does least damage to the environment. Sustainable Marketing practices also lead to maximising profits because the firms make sure that proper resources are utilised efficiently, which limits wastage. On the other hand, consumers will have greater consciousness when it comes to using the resources

The Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this Research is to determine how an Eco-friendly store helps in sustainable marketing. By incorporating the green lifestyle, the stores ensure to reduce the impacts on global environment and thus emphasises on the Conservation of the ecology. It also helps to improve the performance and the functions of the stores. This study attempts:

• To understand the Renewable sources of energy used by the Store
• To identify effective sustainable practices in Retail Marketing
• To understand various green construction practices followed by the stores
• To Analyse the use of Recycled resources
• To study the concepts of Energy Efficiency
• To analyse how store achieves measurable resource conservation and savings.
• To study the Waste Management of store.
• To promote concepts of “Green Economies”.
• To Examine some of the reasons why an organisation/firm should practice Sustainability

Research Methodology

A research methodology is the general research strategy that highlights the way in which one can conduct the research. It is a theoretical as well as a practical analysis carried out for gaining answers in form of analysis and statistics as well as for determining the conclusions / suggestions if any. Research methodology is the specific procedure, or a technique used to identify, select, process, and analyse the topic in detail.

Here we have adopted the method of undertaking a Case Study of a Retail Shop.

Unstructured method of interaction was also used.Sample: Officials of Decathlon store, Wagholi were interviewed and questionnaires were filled. The sample size comprised of 10 sports Leaders who willingly shared information about the green practices of the store.The information solicited from the respondents was more of qualitative nature than quantitative information. The in-depth probing gave valuable insights of the conscious efforts the employees are putting to make the store Eco- friendly and thus contributing to sustainable development.

Observation Method

A visit to the Decathlon, Wagholi store, gave insights of the eco-friendliness of the store.Secondary Source: Informative books on Retail MarketingThis Case study will further provide guidelines not only to the same type of retail shop but also to different retail shops on how to carry out different sustainable marketing practices. Here, our conclusion / suggestion may help any retail shop to adapt certain sustainable practices and develop themselves at their managerial level. With this case study, we are putting forward the “From Specific to General” approach. By providing a detailed study of one retail store – Decathlon, our guidelines, conclusions and suggestions are open to all retail stores. This methodology selection allows the reader to critically evaluate the statistics and reach to the suggestions and conclusions provided for a better knowledge of the above topic.Chapter 5: A visit to an Eco-friendly storeDecathlon S.A. is a French sporting goods retailer. With over 1400 stores in 45 countries, it is the largest sporting goods retailer in the world. It started with a store in Lille in 1976, founded by Michel Leclercq.

The retailer stocks a wide range of sporting goods, from tennis rackets to advanced scuba diving equipment, usually in large superstores which are sized at an average of 4,000m².. In terms of the size, so is the case with the Wagholi outlet Decathlon, with wide variety of sports equipment and has developed a great amount of Market presence amongst the youngsters in the city of Pune.

In addition to this, Decathlon products are also available online through their online resellers.With its Store of Approximately 2,000m², this store is located on the outskirts of Pune. The store has been following the concept of Eco-friendly store since its Establishment i.e. 2014.With its friendly and helpful staff Decathlon, Wagholi Caters Sporty crowd with full enthusiasm.The store has a simple ferrous oxide IPF flooring with the corrugated sheets painted white from outside to reduce heat. The roof is inclined on a certain angle so the water during rainy season is collected in a tank for Rain water harvesting. the collected water is later used for Sanitation. This helps to save approximately 3 tankers per week. There is a sewage treatment plant which helps the store to recycle water and the water is used to irrigate the plants through Drip Irrigation.Decathlon has replaced half of the lights with the LED ones and it has helped the store to bring down their Electrical expenses to 38,000 from 57,000. They avoid switching on the lights in the day time.As the store uses the cardboard boxes in very large quantities, these are folded and reused, if not then recycled. As far as carry bags are concerned, these are sold to local vendors, minimising the costs and then using recycled ones. This minimises their costs resulting in reduction of costs. The interior of store is divided into Compartments with racks and there are no walls. This helps to create better ventilation in the store. Instead of Air conditioner in the outlet, the structure of building is tall and has 6 large fans which leads to proper cooling due to the process of convection.The store itself has its own eco-friendly policies to promote green practices among its customers by providing biodegradable bag only if necessary. The employees carry on these practices among their customers. The store has its own different department to carry out the eco-friendly works for the waste.

Perception of Employees of Decathlon

The working environment is very co-operative, and all employees know each other very well and are also versed with their day to day duties and responsibilities. The store is very well working with some of its sustainable and eco-friendly marketing practices. The store has installed few LED lights recently. This may lead to a huge reduction in costs in future. And for employees it is beneficial for them in long run as reduction in the capital expenses may lead to an increase in the incentives provided. Even the uniforms are not much formal but just a net-like material made t-shirts which are in a kind very much recyclable. The store is working on using zero emission resources. Some of the things like using the natural source of light i.e. sunlight, not using ACs but instead using big huge fans, etc. are considerable according to the employees.

Employees contribute their best to promote recycling of the plastic by urging their customers to put the used plastic bottles in the dustbin to recycle them. Besides the employees feel that eco-friendly practices like rainwater harvesting and warehousing the cardboard boxes for recycling are really going well and are really benefitting the store in many ways.They try to make efforts to contribute more on a personal level to save more resources by working eco-friendly.

Analysis & Interpretation of Data

From the survey we conducted with the decathlon employees, we found out that they follow various sustainable practices. [image: ]The sources of energy, all the employees considered electricity as a vital source of energy which is followed by diesel as a secondary source, mainly used in generators. The essential construction material used according to employees are tin sheets and rugged floor along withSloping roof.Packaging material mostly preferred are cardboard boxes, along with disposable and biodegradable carry bags. 75% of material used includes Eco-friendly and Recyclable Material. While remaining 25% which is disposable plastic is also degradable.