Kao Corperation
Executive Summary
Cosmetic companies, like other companies, face sustainability challenges. It is the mandate of these companies to develop strategies for managing such sustainability within their business. This report presents the sustainability challenges faced by Kao Corporation, a company within the cosmetic industry. The report is divided into various sections, such as the introduction, which sets the audience into the report’s primary purpose. The other area is the company overview which depicts the background information for the Kao Corporation. Then there is a section that discusses the environmental factors creating the need for sustainable marketing in Kao Company. This section discusses all the environmental factors, including demand for eco-friendly packaging and climatic change. Finally, the report presents an area for ways in which Kao Corporation is managing sustainability within its business where issues concerning water management, green-washing, eco-friendly packaging among others are discussed.
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Background of the Organization
3.0 Environmental Factors Creating Need for Sustainable Marketing 5
4.0 Potential Impacts of Sustainability Issues in Organization6
5.0 The extend by which the Organization is Managing Sustainability7
6.0 Conclusion8
7.0 References10
Report on Sustainability Facing Kao Corporation
1.0 Introduction
Companies within the cosmetic industry face a lot of sustainability challenges that need to be managed. It is natural for companies to ensure they employ genetic makeup for promotion hence standing out in the industry. Thus there is a need for companies to adopt sustainable marketing as both product and brand marketing approach. Therefore, as the Senior Management Team for Kao Corporation, we conducted a research on the sustainability challenges facing the cosmetic industry and their solutions. These challenges need to be managed to avoid instances of adverse impacts on the progress of an organization. Notably, throughout the research we found out that eco-friendly packaging, climate change, water management and green-washing are some of the crucial sustainability challenges. Therefore, this report will focus on these sustainability challenges of the cosmetic industry, emphasizing on Kao corporation, assess the potential impacts of these challenges to our organization and then evaluate the extent in which Kao company is managing such issues.
2.0 Background of the Organization
Kao Corporation is a multination company in the cosmetic industry operating in 26 countries in Asia, North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The company was founded in 1887 as Kao Soap Company, Ltd. Kao was founded as a soap manufacturing company but also manufactures and markets other products such as fatty chemicals, edible oils, and specialty chemicals. Important to note that, it is among the world’s leading suppliers of information technology products and services. The company has continued to operate under Yoki-Monozukuri following its mission “”Striving for the wholehearted satisfaction and enrichment of the lives of people globally.” The Corporate name Kao originated from Kao Sekken which referred to quality toilet paper. In 1890, the company launched new products in the Japanese toiletries market. In this case, the company included the manufacture of other products such as detergents, girlish and baby care products, prestige cosmetics among other beauty care products, and healthy food products for healthy life.
3.0 Environmental Factors Creating Need For Sustainable Marketing
There are number of environmental factors that create need for sustainable marketing in Koa Corporation such as eco-friendly packaging, water management and greenwashing. Firstly, eco-friendly is vital within the sustainable marketing. In this case, the company has to ensure it manufactures products that can hardly harm the environment. In other words, the products of the company should not have hazardous impacts to the environment. Eco-friendly products are either recycled or reused to avoid environmental degradation. For instance, it is required that companies adhere to these factors whenever they manufacture products. Since cosmetic industry deal with chemicals, it should adhere to factors like eco-friendly packaging when outsourcing their products.
Another crucial factor is water management since companies should conserve water. Important to note that water management is an environmental factor that needs companies to adopt sustainable marketing. In this case, whenever companies within all the industries market their brands and products, they must ensure they conserve water. This is because there are most of the areas suffering from water shortages hence companies should avoid water wastage. Even though water is crucial within the production and manufacture of products, companies should adopt some crucial processes to manage it, such as recycling and reusing it. Additionally, greenwashing is another important environmental factor create need for sustainable marketing with various companies. This is the process in which most of the products in the companies are labelled either “natural” or “organic” to indicate they have no harm to the environment. It is a requirement for the companies to ensure they produce green-washed products.
4.0 Potential Impacts of Sustainability Issues in the Organization
Sustainability strategies are important within an organization since they help in marketing the products and brand. Companies with the most attractive sustainability strategy have strong competitive advantage while those with sustainability issues have weak competitive advantages. Therefore, this calls for Kao organization to venture into useful sustainability approach to penetrate in the market. Notably, when emphasizing on product and brand marketing, most potential customers always buy from companies with sustainable efforts. For instance, a company should ensure that its products are quality and eco-friendly for customers to frequently buy such products (Silvestre & Ţîrcă, 2019). For the case of Kao Corporation, it should focus on these issues to curb the issue of completion hence creating competitive advantage. In another perspective, sustainability issues leads to underperformance within an organization. This is because companies repute their brands from sustainability strategies, thus when there are challenges, it means there is a gap. Therefore, this is referred to as a weakness hence other companies operating within the same field can overthrow them in the market.
Climate change is a sustainability issue with solemn consequences for the environment, society, the economy. Factors such as coastal flooding can have a significant impact on businesses, causing business interruptions and losses. For instance, in the Kao Corporation, climatic change is a serious issue that adversely affect the operations of the business (Acuti et al., 2020). In this case, the company depends more on water for different operations like production. Therefore, with climatic changes like drought, water can become an issue in the company affecting its manufacturing process. Climate change can also lead to increased demand for energy as temperatures get warmer and the need for air conditioning increases. This means higher costs for businesses in general. Increased energy demand also leads to increased consumption of natural resources such as water and fossil fuels, which can lead to a lack of resources for companies to manufacture their products. Many companies have already started implementing automated response systems to combat these negative effects.
5.0 Extent by which the Organization is Managing sustainability
Kao Corporation is managing the sustainability through a number of ways as discussed here. The company reuses and recycles water to ensure water management. In this case, Kao Company is one of the key companies within the cosmetic industry to reuse and recycle water for manufacturing its products. Notably, the company has a water treatment plant where used water is recycled and treated for reuse. This helps the company to manage since it is one of the serious sustainability issues within the industry. Additionally, as a way of managing water, Kao Corporation ensures it reduces water wastes by reducing the amount of water. Supportively, the company instead of using water to clean most of its apparatus, it uses sterilization to reduce water wastage.
Another key way in which Kao Corporation is managing sustainability within its business is through eco-friendly packaging. Kao Company uses eco-friendly papers to pack its products. This is to ensure there is no environmental pollution. For products that are packed in big containers, the company recycles them to avoid unnecessary dumping of wastes. Also, recycling and using eco-friendly packets to pack its products, Kao Company also tries to reduce water pollution since most of these packets are thrown into big water masses. Therefore, they either use eco-friendly packages or label their packets with “return me to shop for recycle.” This is an important way that Kao Company uses to avoid environmental pollution. Also, greenwashing is another way in which Kao Corporation has managed sustainability (Maziriri, 2020). In this case, the company has always labeled most of its products as “natural” or “organic” to show they have no harm to the environment.
Finally, the company has more efforts put on chemical business where it reduces the overall amount of raw materials used to 10 percent as well as post-use waste to 12.5 percent for the comparable products. This is to ensure that the company uses raw materials maximally without wastage. The wastes when manufacturing its products are recycled for another use. Due to the right use of chemicals during manufacturing Kao Corporation has won awards for Green Sustainable Chemistry (GSC). Therefore, this indicates how the company has managed sustainability within the business for better reputation in the market. It is due to these strategies that the company has penetrated in the cosmetic market.
6.0 Conclusion
Conclusively, throughout this report, sustainability challenges of cosmetic industry emphasizing on Kao Corporation, assess the potential impacts of these challenges to our organization and then evaluate the extent in which Kao company is managing such issues have been discussed. Companies always face sustainability challenges; hence they should develop strategies to manage such issues. This is because sustainability issues lead to underperformance of an organization since people rely on reviews of a company before making purchase decisions. This shows that, when a company is not adequately sustaining its issues, then fewer customers will rely on its products. Throughout the report, it is clearly depicted that the most crucial challenges include eco-friendly packaging, climate change, water management and green-washing. Therefore, Kao Corporation has managed such challenges by reusing and recycling water to prevent water wastage, produced eco-friendly products with green-washed packages. Therefore, this reports indicates that Kao Corporation has worked hard to manage sustainability within its business.
7.0 References
Acuti, D., Bellucci, M., & Manetti, G. (2020). Company disclosures concerning the resilience of cities from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) perspective. Cities, 99, 102608.
Maziriri, E. T. (2020). Green packaging and green advertising as precursors of competitive advantage and business performance among manufacturing small and medium enterprises in South Africa. Cogent Business & Management, 7(1), DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2020.1719586
Silvestre, B. S., & Ţîrcă, D. M. (2019). Innovations for sustainable development: Moving toward a sustainable future. Journal of Cleaner Production, 208, 325-332.