Millennial consumers shape corporate culture towards sustainability - the case of the food industry in Portugal

Abstract

The main purpose of this Thesis is to understand Portuguese Millennials’ attitudes towards Corporate Sustainability and whether these influence companies’ Corporate Culture. Millennials seem to care about the environment and society to a greater degree than previous generations, and as consumers, they care about the sustainability of the products they buy. They also present an extremely complex brand loyalty behavior, and want to buy from companies whose values are in line with their own. To understand whether there is indeed a relationship between this generational segment’s sustainability values and their preference to buy from certain companies, the food industry in Portugal served as the exploratory ground, and between- and within-subject experiment was employed. The results show that not only does Corporate Sustainability mean more to Portuguese Millennials (as consumers) than sustainable production methods (i.e., organic production), but knowledge of a company’s engagement in sustainability practices influences these consumers’ purchase intent and brand loyalty. More specifically, knowledge that a company engages in sustainability practices beyond sustainable production methods had a positive effect on these measures, while knowledge of lack of engagement resulted in a negative effect. Moreover, this segment of consumers not only tends to be more loyal to companies whose values are in line with those of sustainability but also punishes those which are not in line with these values, even if these companies engage in sustainable methods of production.