Resource-constrained product development: Implications for green marketing and green supply chains

By Arun Sharma, G. Iyer. 2012

259 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract While academic debates and practical approaches to green marketing have matured over the past few decades, one central conundrum that has remained unresolved has been the trade-off between the higher prices of green products and the objectives of environmental sustainability. In general, it has been observed that green products are priced at a premium to account for their environmentally friendly consumption and use. We argue that resource-constrained product development approaches (alternatively labeled jugaad) that are observed in emerging countries such as China and India have the potential to change the traditional models of green product development. In addition to the competitive advantage that resource-constrained product development approaches provide, we suggest that these practices have sustainability and supply chain benefits. We show that the innovation process relies primarily on frugal engineering that reduces material use (thereby reducing burden on supply chain) and meets green marketing objectives at much lower, and therefore, more affordable prices. We draw out several implications for theory and practice.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/230dd2e810f5b7287011b5a5baf813cd737ea954

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Citations in the corpus

What is frugal innovation? Three defining criteria (2016, background): “…to use (Andel 2013; Wooldridge 2010), of saving resources (Barclay 2014; Rao 2014; Tiwari and Herstatt 2012), of having a lower impact on the environment (Basu et al. 2013; Jänicke 2014; Sharma and Iyer 2012), or of meeting a specific lifestyle or consumer behaviour (Flatters and Willmott 2009).”
Can Frugal Go Global? Diffusion Patterns of Frugal Innovations (2016, background): “Frugal innovation stems from resource scarcity: employing limited resources to meet the needs of low-income consumers [39].”
From Cost to Frugal and Reverse Innovation: Mapping the Field and Implications for Global Competitiveness (2014, background): “Other terms for frugal innovation are Ghandian innovation (Prahalad and Mashelkar 2010) or jugaad (Sharma and Iyer 2012; Cappelli et al. 2010; Petrick and Juntiwasarakij 2011), terms that emphasize the specific Indian context in which such innovations have often been created.”
How Frugal Innovation Promotes Social Sustainability (2016, background): “These resource constrained product development strategies have the ability to give rise to products which are environmentally friendly due to lower resource use and greater supply chain efficiencies as compared to conventional product development approaches [17].”
Crafting Sustainable Development Solutions: Frugal Innovations of Grassroots Entrepreneurs (2016, background): “The term colloquially means a creative idea or a quick workaround to get through technical, commercial, logistic or legal issues [20,81].”