Digital strategies as a response to increasing customer sustainability needs - A case study of B2B e-commerce

Abstract

Businesses in the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce landscape must react to the increasingly urgent global challenge of climate change. Simultaneously, customer preferences are shifting, and more and more customers ask for sustainable products and services and prefer to purchase from companies with high sustainability standards. A further trend that is evolving in parallel and has the potential to contribute to greater customer centricity and sustainability is digitalization.

It is surprising that these three developments are still widely considered independently of each other, both in theory and practice. A deep understanding of customer sustainability needs and targeted digitally supported actions to respond might benefit the environment and at the same time align with market demand and support the digital sustainable transformation of a business.

With my research, I attempt to explore the intersection between the three concepts of sustainability, customer centricity, and digitalization. I take customer sustainability needs as a starting point to investigate potential digital response strategies in the context of a Germany-based B2B e-commerce retailer. This approach provides a practical lens for digital sustainability research. I adopt a mixed-method approach, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. My research data are derived from academic literature, a customer survey, stakeholder interviews, internal case company documents, and publicly available information.

Based on the data, I identify the most important customer sustainability needs in the context of the case company. I further indicate which digital strategies and specific approaches the company might adopt to serve its customer sustainability needs in the best possible way. Finally, based on my insights, I suggest a digital sustainability strategy for the company and give indications about the implementation. My findings can be used by the company to guide the development and implementation of a digital sustainability strategy.