Topic: The Contribution of Sustainable Marketing on the Performance of the Beverage Industry: A Case Study of Coca-Cola Beverages Industry.

Abstract

Sustainability has become one of the most important challenges for the beverage industry over the last few decades. In fact, many producers have implemented environmental, social or economic aspects of sustainability at several stages of their production process. One of the reasons that might explain this interest in sustainability is that consumers are changing their behavior to integrate sustainable and environmental considerations into their purchase behavior. The topic of this study is the contribution of sustainable marketing on the performance of the beverage industry in Uganda. Interest in this topic was piqued due to the increasing levels of plastic pollution in the Uganda versus the repetitive green campaigns that had seemed not to reveal any satisfying results over the years thus the need to make a study and find out the issues underlying. The main objective of the study was to examine the role of sustainable marketing on the performance of the beverage industry. Having various players in the beverage study attention was directed to that one player that dominates the market share in Uganda, Coca-Cola Beverages Uganda. CCBU has announced several green programs and they have been started up with the intention to flourish but they only manifest for a short time as compared to the suggested goals of the firm. The methods of data collection for this study were mainly an interview guide and a questionnaire. These methods were choose to collect variety of information from the respondents at the firm. At the end of data collection, results were tallied and formatted into a simpler means. The study found out that there is potential for sustainability programs to be adapted in the firm and also the community as well. Furthermore, the study identified the factors that hindered the flourishing of sustainable marketing namely; preference of the PET bottle over the biodegradable bottle, lack of awareness of the consumer about the dangers of the PET bottle, the reliability of the PET bottle. Conclusions to the study were basically that the study concluded that sustainable marketing should not only adopted occasionally by beverage firms but it should be fully activated in all campaigns, corporate social responsibility programs among others. One of the recommendations for the study were Strict laws should be put in place that restrict the poor disposal of garbage in the country. This paper makes a novel contribution to understanding how sustainable marketing has and will impact the performance of the beverage industry in Uganda.