2.3.3. Prioritizing Sustainability in the Consumer Sector: Purposeful Retail and Shopping

Ratcliffe and Stubbs [93] underlined the impact on retailing in the 1990s (after the replacement of the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s by consumer conservatism expressing the need to provide value for money) of the emergence of purposeful shopping and leisure shopping. Accenture [94] revealed that consumers who scored retailers higher on purpose spent 31% more (based on 2018 Accenture Love Index Research) compared with consumers who scored retailers lower. Retailers therefore need to rethink their purpose and serve a purpose in consumers' lives. As shown by Ancketill [95], positive change which benefits both society and the planet can be created and accelerated by a strategic approach (powered by transparency, localism, and discontinuity) coming from a brand or retailer's values and actions. NielsenIQ [96] has confirmed consumers' shift to purpose-driven product choices. While Cluster and Cooper [97] showed that today's consumers want to know what the sustainability efforts are behind their favorite brands; since purposeful shopping (digitally led given buyers' online research before purchasing) is mainstream, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies must ensure that data are transparent from end to end of the value chain. This is because of consumers' evolving interests and concerns regarding what they buy and the retailers who bring them together, which involves complex ESG (environmental, social, and governance) measurement and greater visibility into supply chains.

It is also important, with respect to prioritizing sustainability in the consumer sector, both to define better the sustainable products to better engage consumers, and to highlight the opportunity coming with sustainability in green business building by rethinking the business model by starting with sourcing and logistics [98]. Research from global payables automation company Tipalti Europe revealed that United Kingdom (UK) businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit are considering more and more ESG/sustainability capabilities as the most important quality needed in a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) today [99]. A Deloitte UK survey [100] revealed that sustainability is considered most often by consumers on their frequent essential purchases (groceries, household items, personal care, and clothing), the main barrier to adopting a consumer sustainable lifestyle still being their lack of interest (the perceived cost incurred in this adoption and

issues around accessing relevant information about coming after it). In the digital economy, retailers are challenged to organize, interpret, and embed data into existing workflows, giving a finished surface to actionable insights from data [101]. Recent arguments have been put forward to invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions as the most effective strategy to introduce and to increase sales of new sustainable products [102], considering the positive effects of a strong brand CSR reputation.

2.3.4. Meeting and Exceeding Consumers' Expectations by Providing Improved Experience Using the Lens of Sustainability

Islam [103] showed that sustainability has caused doubts about our consumption patterns (as we have seen earlier), and that environmental sociology is providing us a powerful lens to understand the current environmental problems and challenges, and to have ideas for a sustainable earth and design it. Pinn [104] underlined that as sustainability is a customer experience issue, companies need to meet customer expectations by improving customer experience (CX) using the lens of sustainability. According to McNamee and Fernandez [105], consumers can be helped to make sustainable everyday choices and to start to drive longer-term change by creating improved experiences brands that can communicate near-term goals and impact—not just long-term targets, with marketers' role being essential.

Regarding today's digital experiences, in the opinion of Forrester these experiences involve both the use of natural language (chat, voice, and other more visual digital experiences) and the anticipation of customer needs, with consumers expecting brands to obtain just the information or service they need in the consumers' best interests in the brand's digital journey, beyond the highly contextual and right-sized experiences expected [106]. A recent Forrester report looked, among other aspects, at offering moments-based customer experiences by innovating, which involves having marketers address contextually relevant engagement and anticipatory customer experiences by raising traditional campaigns to a more important level [107]. Prior research within a 2016 Forrester report entitled "The Dawn of Anticipatory CX" (CX = customer experience) revealed that the missing link in staying ahead of rising customer expectations is none other than anticipation [108], with the report showing how to valorize the power of anticipation and sustain long-term positive CX impact [109].

Data-driven customer science provides companies, as demonstrated by Emilie Kroner [110], the necessary insights to track, measure, and improve in core areas: providing easy, enjoyable, and convenient CX; rewarding shoppers in ways meaningful to them; providing personalized communications based on their customer preferences; providing the product assortment their customers want; promoting the products that matter most to their customers; providing prices that their customers perceive as fair; ensuring feedback by having a two-way conversation and emotional connection with their customers. According to Kroner, Field, and Delgado [111], CX is focused on long-term relationships and success, being part science (including by using the right digital technologies to reach consumers at the appropriate touchpoints, and planning, executing, and measuring against the tactics aligned to the strategy of a great CX program integrated into the organizational ways of operating) and not only part art (making people associate a brand with customer obsession and feel in every touchpoint, for instance). CX transformation into customer science (by merging different technologies, platforms, and insights) will ensure companies the next level of customers' contextual understanding [112]. As shown more recently by Gaia Rubera, Amplifon Chair in Customer Science at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy [113], marketing, big data, and machine learning are the three ingredients of customer science.

Respondents to the Winter 2021 EPAM Research Report entitled 'Consumers Unmasked' (Stage 2, December 2021: Quantitative Survey of 3005 citizens in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany, including EPAM Continuum Consumer Council) said the following: 'they wanted to understand retailers' sustainability journeys, and they expected open, transparent honesty in their communications.' EPAM Continuum Consumer Council is

composed of 71 Millennial and Gen-Z shoppers from each of the following five sectors: food, fashion, travel, fitness, and home [114].

An under-explored area in the research literature is that concerning how a sustainable product and sustainable consumption are working together from the point of view of retailers, by taking into account what consumers are thinking, feeling, saying, doing, and experiencing, considering them as co-creators in sustainable product development. Therefore, we investigated the extent to which there is a positive influence of retailers' sustainability agenda (including by fulfilling consumers' sustainability demands with new products and processes) on retailers' increased concentration on responsibly answering to sustainability as a personal value of consumers (changing their behavior) and on retailers' digital transformation to aid consumers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and to make informed choices in the omnichannel world.
