Projektakademie: Sustainable buyer behavior in the value chain: determinants and marketing implications

改变消费者行为被认为是促进可持续发展的巨大潜力。但是，不仅仅是在价值链的末端，购买者通过他们对产品的选择和使用来决定是否以及在多大程度上为可持续发展作出贡献。在价值链的上游阶段，购买和购买后的决策成为其他参与者的前提，从而影响整个价值链的可持续性。然而，以往关于可持续购买者行为的研究片面地关注价值链最后阶段可持续消费的决定因素，而将价值链上的内部过程(如调整机制、利益相关者关系和权力关系)视为一个黑匣子。然而，遵循这种有限的方法可能无法发现供应链上更高层次的可持续买家行为的潜在原因(如对产品用途或替代品的有限了解)，以及价值链中可能的自下而上现象(如信息缺失)。因此，本研究旨在对价值链不同阶段的可持续购买和购买后行为的影响因素进行实证研究。一方面，借鉴行为心理学的理论和概念，如何从价值链各行为者的角度来解释仅仅表达的可持续购买者行为与实际可持续购买者行为之间的潜在差距。另一方面，有人问如何才能缩小或避免这种差距。为此，对上下游参与者(制造商-下游用户、下游用户-零售商、零售商-终端用户)价值链不同阶段的这种所谓的行为差距进行了实证研究。在此基础上，通过系统地影响价值链中各个参与者的行为，作为以可持续发展为导向的营销的一部分，得出了克服(避免和减少)不同价值创造水平上的行为差距的起点。在这里，重点是多层次营销，特别是多层次供应链沟通，它涵盖了供应商针对客户客户的所有营销或沟通措施，而这一点在营销学的实证研究中被广泛忽视。因此，考虑到价值链中各自的利益相关者关系，也有可能为可持续的购买行为创造逐步的激励机制。

Changing consumer behavior is attributed a high potential for promoting sustainable development. But it is not only at the end of the value chain that buyers, through their product choice and use, decide whether and to what extent contributions are made for sustainable development. At upstream stages of the value chain, purchase and post-purchase decisions become the premise for other players and thus influence sustainability in the value chain as a whole. The previous research on sustainable buyer behavior, however, unilaterally focuses on determinants of sustainable consumption at the last stage of the value chain, while looking at the internal processes along the value chain (e. g. adjustment mechanisms, stakeholder relationships and power relations) as a black box. However, following such a limited approach may fail in detecting potential causes for missing impulses of a sustainable buyer behavior further up in the supply chain (such as limited knowledge of product uses or alternatives) as well as possible bottom-up phenomena in the value chain (such as information deficits). This research project therefore aims to empirically investigate which factors influence sustainable purchase and post-purchase behavior at different stages of the value chain. On the one hand, it is asked how the potential gap between merely expressed and actual sustainable buyer behavior can be explained from the perspective of various actors in the value chain by drawing on theories and concepts of behavioral psychology. On the other hand, it is asked how this gap can be reduced or avoided. For this purpose, this so-called behavioral gap at different stages of the value chain of upstream and downstream actors (manufacturers - downstream users, downstream users - retailers, retailers - end users) is empirically investigated. On this basis, starting points for overcoming (avoiding and reducing) the behavioral gap at different levels of value creation are derived by systematically influencing the behavior of the respective actors in the value chain as part of a sustainability-oriented marketing. Here, the focus is on multi-level marketing and in particular multi-level supply chain communication which subsumes all marketing or communication measures that a provider addresses to its customers' customers which has been widely ignored by empirical research in marketing science. Taking into account the respective stakeholder relationships in the value chain, it is thus also possible to create step-by-step incentives for sustainable buying behavior.