Comment: Shoppers don’t care about retail and eco

Time was, not so long ago, when retailers were falling over themselves to show that they were green. Stores were toasted for their BREEAM rating (whatever this might be), anaerobic digesters were appearing as part of store blueprints and passive ventilation (opening the windows) was looked at as the way forward.

Today nobody cares. Or at least shoppers don’t. Retailers from Marks & Spencer to Walmart continue to open ‘eco’ stores, but nobody cares. The truth of the matter is that where this kind of thing might once have conferred some kind of competitive advantage, today’s shopper will pay little attention to the recycled panels from which a store has been built, as long as the price is right and the quality is up to scratch.

The latter point is why a few knackered dobbins should garner such a reaction across Europe, while melting icecaps and suchlike rarely seem to get a look in. And on price, in a post-Lehmans world, even the affluent are not above checking the ticket before handing over a card. There are bigger fish to fry, as far as the consumer is concerned, than worrying about whether we are going to hell in a handcart – that’ s probably some way off and we’ll need to get there first.

So what does this mean for retailers? It probably means that there is still a sense that being good corporate citizens matters – otherwise they’d have offered a collective two-fingered salute to the equine lobby and it would have been business as usual. But what shoppers are worried about is here and now, rather than some point in the indeterminate future.

The other thing is that there is probably now an expectation that retailers will do the right thing as far as the environment is concerned and that it has just become part of the matrix. Enough therefore of signs welcoming shoppers into ‘eco’ store and more perhaps of ranges that are fit for purpose and which actually are what they say they are.

Shoppers probably do care a little about the planet, the future and the direction in which we are headed, but this is background noise when set against negative interest rates (again, how does this work), dodgy cardinals and horse-trading. Retailers are doing the right thing, but time to stop making much of it.