CEMS2160 Sustainability Communication and Marketing (5 cr)

The course aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding how sustainability issues can be an essential part of strategic communication and marketing strategies and how these are important activities to respond to changing stakeholder expectations about sustainability, environmental and social accountability. Students will learn the role of communication in increasing societal, political and stakeholders’ sensitiveness to sustainability issues and how to mitigate the risks of green, blue, pink, and social corporate washing. In addition to that, students will be able to identify the role and importance of sustainability for reputation management and corporate governance and in relation to b-to-b-marketing and the supply chain management. Special attention is also given to the areas of sustainable management and consumer behavior.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

This course supports several UN Sustainable Development Goals (9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, 12 Responsible Production and Consumption, and 13 Climate Action) by discussing sustainability communication, sustainable consumption and its marketing. It teaches how to increase the integration of small-scale industrial and other enterprises into the value chains and markets, how to encourage companies to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle and how to improve education and awareness-raising of consumers on climate change mitigation, adaptation and impact reduction.

On the successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• define and explain marketing, sustainability and sustainability communication concepts and understand the relationship between these concepts;·
• understand the role of strategic communication and its approaches in communicating sustainability issues;
• analyze and explain strategic and operative level sustainable decisions related to stakeholder communication, advertising, products and services, digital issues, brands and market;
• analyze sustainability discourses promoted by different organizations across different channels and explain their strategic purpose;
• describe and analyze models of consumer behavior within the framework of sustainable consumerism and understand the crucial role of the consumer;
• identify the role and importance of sustainability for reputation management and corporate governance and in relation to b-to-b-marketing and the supply chain management.

Basic marketing course