Systembolagets hållbara marknadsföring - En studie om Systembolagets marknadsföring av ekologiska produkter och de påverkande faktorerna

Abstract

The increase of demand on ecological products and their recent public display in the media, has made them more and more important for Swedish companies to attend to. In the year of 1979, there was a new law regarding new marketing regulations on behalf of products with alcohol. The law restraining marketing for alcoholic products, in combination with the Swedish entry in the European Union in 1995, created very limited possibilities for the state-owned monopoly company Systembolaget to market ecological products. Another problem with Systembolagets marketing strategy for ecological products is that they have restricting social responsibilities towards the society since they sell alcohol, which makes the ecological products less important to address. However, there is both a loophole in the restraining law and possibilities to spread information about both social responsibilities and ecological products. The goal for Systembolaget is to act social sustainably towards the society to reduce damages caused by alcohol, and they have clear instructions on how to act sustainable both for the society and the environment. The report has been made by a qualitative analysis to answer the question: How Systembolaget can combine their goals towards social responsibility and state owned monopoly status to actually market ecological products? The focus has been on conducting theories on monopoly, marketing and consumer behaviour in order to answer the question. Also semistructured interviews were made with representatives for both Systembolaget and the public health institute. As a conclusion, the report found the following statements as results of the study; As a state-owned monopoly, Systembolaget lacks all kind of competition on their market. However, they do have opportunity to be creative with their collection of beverages without loosing market shares, and with the growing trend among consumers demanding more ecological products. This can be a positive affect of the state-owned monopoly status that Systembolaget has. Alongside the monopoly status, consumer behaviours such as socioeconomic groups, social identity theory, motivation and tendencies can explained how Systembolaget should act in Kandidatuppsats VT 2017 their marketing to their consumers the most beneficial way. The marketing strategy, both present and possible to alternate in the future, is the aspects of ethical marketing and the People aspect of the Marketing mix theory. These theories with aspects from the study results shows that Systembolaget has possibilities to target their customers with ecological products in the future.