How to develop sustainability in B2B through customer training

We all know that products such as agrochemicals can create substantial sustainability risks, particularly if users fail to ensure their correct use. But is there any way to reduce these risks? 

In a recent study, researchers Joëlle Vanhamme (EDHEC), Ariovaldo Alberto Da Silva (Synapse), Alina Ferecatu (Rotterdam School of Management), Stefano Puntoni (Wharton) and Rafael Alberto Souza e Silva (Coffee of Andradas) show that training is a cornerstone of sustainable development, with a specific focus on design science.

What is sustainable development ?

Sustainable development is a concept developed in the wake of the environmental movement in the 1960s. In 1987, the Brundtland Report (2) defined it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In many contexts, education plays a key role in achieving sustainable development. In fact, every goal listed in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (3) requires education to empower people with the knowledge, skills and capability to live in dignity, build lives, and contribute to societies.

In particular, the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG4) explicitly identifies the acquisition of knowledge and skills as a way to facilitate sustainable development.

Empowering farmers with knowledge and customer training

Sustainability issues often arise when customers use products inappropriately. 

For example, in agricultural and livestock sectors, farmers' excessive use of antibiotics can produce bacterial resistance, food safety risks for consumers, and environmental issues.

Intensive pesticide use is also responsible for acute poisoning, which accounts for significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, as well as soil and water pollution and widespread harm to ecosystems.

These health and environmental risks can be compounded by a lack of proper knowledge regarding the correct use of products. They also entail sustainability issues that create ethical conundrums. For example, rising demands to ensure global food security require more effective agricultural practices. Such efficiency currently requires the use of pesticides, because without them, food production levels would drop and prices would soar. However, the overuse or misuse of pesticides creates serious hazards to the environment and human health.

In a field experiment with Brazilian coffee farmers, the researchers established positive effects of customer training, using a design science approach. They found that benefits include enhanced knowledge of correct uses of agrochemicals and farming practices, as well as broader positive impacts on sustainability.

The use of a training method based on a design science approach

Broadly speaking, design science is a problem-solving paradigm that is used to build innovative solutions for practical problems. To take a concrete example, it can be used to design a mobile health app for diabetes management.

In this particular context, the researchers used a tool, which is a problem-based training method that relies on social influence and can be offered jointly with the product. This customer training method exerted a positive impact on customers' knowledge and expertise.

In the past, marketing literature has mostly focused on the influence of employee training, neglecting the role of customer training in B2B contexts. However, to improve customers' knowledge about safe uses of products and practices, companies could adopt methods that can be offered with their products.

This practice could be used to curb customers' unsustainable uses of their products, which represents a meaningful way for them to address their societal responsibilities and generate quality-of-life improvements for all involved stakeholder groups.

A five-step method

Let’s see how this method is applied.

STEP 1. Identification of the problem

First, companies need to identify the problem to solve.  For example, companies that manufacture construction materials like asbestos or lead-based paints may be held responsible for the severe health risks posed by misuse of their products, such as respiratory diseases.

STEP 2. Definition of the requirements

The second step in a design science approach requires identifying tools that might help companies reduce misuses of their products, as well as which requirements these tools should satisfy. With product service system (PSS), companies can offer sets of products and services that jointly meet customers needs. 

Providing education as an added service, jointly with product sales, promises to increase customers’ expertise and knowledge, such that they can engage in proper uses.

STEP 3. Design and development of the tool

The tools that companies use to educate customers usually include advertising, social media, mobile apps, product demonstrations, and sales visits. 

The tool, researchers put in place was a training program tailored to small-hold farmers based on an educational approach relying on social influence and problem-based learning for sustainable development. This training can be jointly offered with the sale of the products.

STEP 4. Application

In their study, researchers tested the tool with small-hold farmers in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The customer training initiative helped them recognize and understand agrochemical-related sustainability problems, as well as provided them with knowledge about the correct use of products.

Indeed, evidence suggests that many small-hold farmers are unaware of the mode of action by which fertilizers or pesticides work, leading them to adopt practices that entail unnecessary exposure, illness, pollution, and economic losses. If they never learn about insect ecology, for example, they rely even more on chemicals to protect their crops.

Providing effective education about proper product use thus represents a way to reduce farmers’ dependency on and overuse of agrochemicals, and to help them transition to more sustainable practices.

STEP 5. Evaluation and communication

Here, the study found that the training put in place helps customers learn and solve sustainability problems better than traditional lectures or no training at all.

Follow-up interviews and testimonies of priority stakeholders (local community, employees, farmers and their families, cooperatives, shareholders) further showed positive impacts for all; education of customer stakeholders generates quality-of-life improvements for each stakeholder group, thanks in part to an increased awareness of the importance of preserving the environment.

Conclusion

Products like agrochemicals can cause serious environmental and health problems if they are not handled properly. That is why education is so important for sustainable development.

Creating and testing a practical tool based on design science for companies that sell potentially harmful products can help them reduce the risk of customers using them the wrong way. This approach was tested with coffee farmers in Brazil. The results show that this kind of training helps farmers better understand safe and effective use, leading to more sustainable outcomes that benefit everyone.

But educating farmers goes beyond lessons on agrochemical use. Companies should be aiming to transform their businesses more completely and eliminate the sale and use of harmful products. For example, they could progressively replace these products with solutions that are not detrimental to nature. In a time of rapid climate change and large-scale pollution, this is especially important.

References

(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850125000094

(2) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf

(3) https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

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