Sustainability and loyalty have a tricky relationship. Sustainability is about reducing wasteful consumption while customer loyalty encourages repeated consumption. How can the two be reconciled?

Customer loyalty is vital for company survival. It is the bond that incites customers to repeatedly choose a company’s products and services over those of its competitors and limits switching intention even in out-of-stock situations (Dick and Basu, 1994; Campo, Gijsbrechts and Nisol, 2000). Loyalty is based on a mutual understanding between the company and the customers it serves. Sustainability is growing in importance. An increasing number of consumers prefer to buy from companies with high perceived environmental performance (Grimmer and Bingham, 2013). Nielsen’s 2014 global survey on consumer response to brands with sustainability claims on packaging or active marketing of corporate social responsibility finds a growing trend in green adoption particularly among the millennials, reported to be three times more open to brands’ sustainable practices than Generation X and twelve times more open than the Baby Boomers. The report also finds a higher propensity to buy socially responsible brands in Asia-Pacific (64%), Latin America (63%) and Middle East/Africa (63%), than in North America (42%) and Europe (40%).