Inspired by Durk Bosma’s forthcoming book to be published on November 12. 

One of the most persistent problems in insights on sustainable behaviour is the gap between what people say they care about and what they actually do. Many consumers express concern about climate change, waste, biodiversity, or fair production, but few consistently translate those concerns into daily choices.  

People make decisions in contexts full of friction: limited budgets, competing needs, habits, social expectations, confusing claims, low trust, and little time. A product may be more sustainable, but if it is more expensive, harder to understand, or simply less desirable, consumers will stick to the alternative. The marketer’s task to make the sustainable option feel relevant, credible, attractive, and easy enough to choose. 

This is where insights professionals have a decisive contribution to make. We are trained to look beyond statements of intent and instead uncover the mechanisms underneath: motivations, trade-offs, category conventions, emotional rewards, social meanings, barriers, triggers, and moments of decision. In this is what is needed to translate sustainability from an abstract ambition into marketing that will actually get people to do the right thing. 

Insights professionals sit at a rare intersection. We combine knowledge of consumer behaviour with proximity to business decisions. We understand how people think, feel, and act, but also how marketing teams, innovation teams, and leadership teams make choices. That dual position matters because sustainability requires translation in both directions. 

On one side, insights teams can bring the consumer into sustainability strategy in a more profound way. We can show where consumers are genuinely motivated, where they are sceptical, where claims are confusing, and where the brand is overestimating willingness to compromise. On the other side, we can help marketing teams move beyond generic green messaging toward propositions that connect real sustainability with category benefits people already value: less waste, durability, health, performance, pride, care, or belonging. 

That makes insights professionals more than researchers in the narrow sense. At our best, we are sparring partners: challenging assumptions, exposing wishful thinking, identifying behavioural opportunities, and helping teams make sustainability commercially meaningful without diluting its seriousness. 

Too often, sustainability research starts with a limiting question: does sustainability sell? The answer is usually unsatisfying because sustainability rarely works as a universal purchase driver by itself. In few categories, it is decisive. In others, it is a hygiene factor, a tie-breaker, a reassuring signal, or a reason to reject brands that are perceived as irresponsible. Usually it only matters when it is connected to a more immediate benefit. Sometimes it matters deeply, but not at the shelf, checkout, or moment of choice. 

A better question is: how can sustainability create value in this specific category, for these specific people, in this specific decision context? That question invites richer research and better strategy. It asks whether sustainability can reduce perceived risk, make a product feel more modern, strengthen trust, justify a premium, reinforce identity, increase loyalty, support innovation, or help a brand earn permission to lead. 

1. Make sustainability concrete. Consumers do not respond to sustainability in the abstract. They respond to benefits, trade-offs, proof, stories, symbols, and cues. Insights teams should help organizations identify which sustainability dimensions matter in the category and how to express them in language people understand. “Lower environmental impact” may be accurate, but it is rarely motivating on its own. “Designed to last twice as long,” “uses what would otherwise go to waste,” or “helps you cut food waste at home” may be more tangible, credible, and behaviourally powerful.
2. Challenge easy fixes. Sustainability is vulnerable to comforting assumptions: consumers will pay more, education will change behaviour, purpose will create preference, or a certification will solve trust. Insights professionals have a duty to test them. The movement toward more sustainable consumption cannot afford strategies built on optimism alone.
3. Become better partners to marketing. Sustainable marketing requires close collaboration between insight, strategy, innovation, brand, communications, and commercial teams. Researchers should not only deliver findings; they should help shape decisions (like they always have). That means bringing behavioural evidence into creative development, identifying the right moments to intervene, clarifying the role of claims, and helping teams understand what will actually change behaviour in market.

There is a moral dimension to this work. If the insights industry claims to understand people and influence decisions, then it cannot stand at a distance from one of the defining behavioural challenges of our time: getting people to behave in ways that don’t compromise our common future.  

But the argument is not only moral. It is also professional. Sustainability will increasingly shape innovation pipelines, brand positioning, customer experience, pricing, regulation, and reputation. Marketing teams will need better evidence, sharper guidance, and more nuanced consumer understanding. The insights professionals who can provide that will become more central to strategy. Those who treat sustainability as a niche topic risk missing one of the most important sources of future relevance for the profession. 

My forthcoming book, Understanding Sustainable Behaviour, to be published on November 12, explores this challenge in depth: how insights professionals can support sustainable marketing into a practical discipline rooted in consumer behaviour. The book is not a manifesto against marketing, nor a celebration of purpose for its own sake. It is a call for better marketing, based on realistic understanding of people, that helps brands create real societal value. 

It’s a plea for insights professionals to take the lead. Not because we have all the answers, but because we know how to ask the right questions. We know how to listen beyond stated preferences. We know how to work with complexity, ambiguity, and trade-offs. And we know how to help marketing teams turn human understanding into better decisions. 

Sustainability will succeed when better choices are designed, positioned, priced, communicated, and normalized in ways that fit real lives. That is the job of marketers. And it’s the job of insights professionals are uniquely equipped to help them do well.