Using an Experiential Business Game to Stimulate Sustainable Thinking in Marketing Education

Abstract

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the importance of environmental protection and sustainability to consumers, policy makers, and society in general. Reflecting this, most organizations are at least aware of this new agenda and wish to be seen as taking steps to improve behaviors in this regard. However, there appears to be a gap between this evolving agenda and the comparatively low level of knowledge that marketing managers actually have of the environmental impact of their own functional decisions. We suggest that this low knowledge level may be due, in part, to the marketplace focus of foundational marketing educational programs, and we attempt to show how broadening the horizons of marketing courses can help students (i.e., future managers) more deeply understand the environmental consequences of their actions. We demonstrate the use of a novel business game, based on the Life Cycle Assessment method, as the foundational cornerstone for the development of a broad understanding of the environmental impact of marketing decisions and actions for the entire life cycle of a product—from raw material extraction to ultimate disposal. The results of an empirical study show that this approach increases students’ appreciation for, and understanding of, these fundamental environmental sustainability concepts.

Keywords

sustainability marketing education serious game experiential learning

For most organizations, the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) are now viewed as companywide necessities (Haugh & Talwar, 2010). In particular, consequent to a range of factors such as consumer pressure, new legislation, and social evolution, environmental sustainability has increasingly become an issue of central importance to firms (Audebrand, 2010). Given the increasingly pervasive nature and impact of environmental sustainability on business, it is imperative to incorporate the environmental sustainability agenda in all areas of firms in order to assist their ability to thrive in the future. To reflect the growing importance of environmental sustainability and contribute to its rise in appreciation, marketing education must integrate the elements of environmental sustainability and create an up-to-date, meaningful, learning experience. Students who develop knowledge and understanding of environmental sustainability will be enabled to contribute to, and develop, sustainable marketing practices.

Through equipping students with the ability to apply sustainable marketing strategies to the emerging challenges facing businesses, they will help push forward the environmental sustainability agenda in current and future generations. The United Nations has served as a catalyst to the development of sustainability thinking in education with its promotion of the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development” between 2005 and 2014. Its concrete application can be seen clearly in academic research highlighting the importance of incorporating sustainability in marketing curricula (Borin & Metcalf, 2010; Bridges & Wilhem, 2008), and the publication of numerous textbooks devoted to marketing and sustainability (Belz & Peattie, 2009; Emery, 2012; Martin & Schouten, 2012).

However, research has identified a contrast between this evolution toward sustainability and the low level of knowledge that managers actually have of the environmental impact of their activity (Laughland & Bansal, 2011). Research suggests that this contrast is due to the fact that managers are often focused on the core elements of their job, which makes them unaware of sustainability issues beyond their immediate work responsibilities (Haugh & Talwar, 2010) and may even make them question the legitimacy of such issues (Thomas & Lamm, 2012). For instance, marketing managers are often focused on tasks relating to the development of products/services to fulfill increasingly demanding consumer needs; the generation of optimal strategies to promote, distribute, and sell products/services; or the identification of competitive advantages (i.e., the tasks associated with maintaining a marketing orientation; e.g., Kirca, Jayachandran, & Bearden, 2005; Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, & Leone, 2011), all with the aim of profit maximization in a challenging economic climate. In such a case, whether the decisions involved in the pursuit of these objectives are environmentally respectful or not may receive less attention.

It is within such a context that marketing education must be called into question, to understand why marketers (whom we must presume may also be ex-marketing students) are so focused on the impact of their decisions on the marketplace to the detriment of understanding any impact occurring outside the marketplace. Marketing educators may wonder why the students they have trained have such a restricted view of the landscape in which they operate. A first element of the answer may be that these boundaries correspond to the ubiquitous product lifecycle framework, composed of the four well-known stages of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline (Levitt, 1965). This framework clearly limits consideration of product life to the marketplace, bounded between the product’s introduction into the market and its purchase by the consumer. However, the actual life of any product goes far beyond these marketplace boundaries, from the extraction of the necessary raw material up until the end of its physical life (e.g., consumption, discarded trash, or recycling). Between these two extremes, the product’s life goes through various stages that every decision taken by marketing managers is likely to affect. As such, this article suggests that a shift in thinking is required in marketing education to change students’ horizons and incorporate this broader product life cycle.

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA; Contreras, Rosa, Pérez, Van Langenhove, & Dewulf, 2009) technique has been developed to determine the environmental impact of a product by breaking it down across the different stages of the product’s life. The “product life” here is composed of the following stages: raw material extraction, production, distribution, use, and end of life. LCA therefore considers the product’s life in a broader manner, related to the material life of the product rather than just to its passage through the marketplace. The present article introduces a new teaching and learning method based on this broader LCA framework. The method is designed to make marketing students aware of the actual environmental impact of the products/services that they will deal with as future managers and to show them the positive or negative influence that marketing decisions can have on this environmental impact. The ultimate goal is to make environmental sustainability issues and values integral to marketing decision-making.

This novel pedagogical method is based on an educational game called “LCP: Life Cycle Perceptions.” LCP was designed as a “serious game” (i.e., a game whose primary purpose is education as opposed to mere enjoyment; e.g., Crookall, 2010) and is an experiential learning game that helps students begin to reconstruct the LCA of a product according to their own perceptions and, subsequently, to confront these perceptions with reality. The learning process thus results from illuminating the gap between the LCA reconstructed by the students and the actual LCA of the product. Once the student have integrated this new scope of the product life, educators can, throughout teaching sessions, explain the influence that marketing decisions may exert on the product’s environmental impact.

The remainder of the article is organized as follows. In the next part, we explain in greater detail the LCA method and how the environmental impact of a product is assessed through this technique. We argue that a significant widening of perspective from the traditional marketing view of the product life cycle to the LCA is needed to fully integrate environmental consciousness to marketing education. Next, we explain why we believe that such a perspective has to be implemented through experiential learning rather than the traditional lecture format. Subsequently, we describe the LCP game and the learning experience derived from it. We also describe an empirical study assessing the effectiveness of a course based on LCP at raising knowledge of the environmental impact of marketing decisions. Finally, we discuss the implications of this method and present some limitations and future research areas.

Literature Review

Life Cycle Assessment

To be environmentally respectful, organizations need an accurate way of assessing the impact of their activity on the environment. A consensus has emerged in the literature recommending the LCA as the appropriate method to measure the environmental impact of a product (Curran, 2012; Reinhard & Zah, 2009; Zah, Faist, Reinhard, & Birchmeier, 2009). The principle of the LCA is to inventory the activities that occur during the whole life of a product and to assess the impact of these activities (e.g., use of resources, harmful emissions) on the environment (Němeček & Kocmanová, 2007). In this perspective, the product’s life refers to its entire material life, and the product’s life cycle is defined as the succession of the following stages: extraction of the raw materials that are needed to make the product, production (transformation of raw materials into a product), transport and distribution (from the manufacturer to the final consumer), use (consumption by the final consumer), and end-of-life (disposal or recycle). The ultimate objective of an LCA is either to analyze a single product (to identify points that are particularly environmentally harmful and try to find solutions to reduce their impact) or to compare several products and give preference to the less harmful one. Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the LCA logic.

Figure 1.

Life Cycle Assessment.

Determining the LCA of a product is a complex task composed of four steps (Thomassen, Dolman, van Calker, & de Boer, 2009). The first step is the goal and scope definition, which refers to the choices related to the unit of analysis to be assessed (e.g., one cup of ground coffee), the system boundary (the life cycle stages that are included in the analysis), and the categories of environmental impacts that will be measured (e.g., CO₂ emissions or energy consumption). The second step, the life cycle inventory, consists of an inventory of all the industrial and human activities composing each stage of the life cycle to determine the exact amount of natural resources that are used and the exact amount of waste and harmful emissions that are produced in each stage. The third step is the environmental impact assessment, where the resources and emissions inventoried during the previous step are expressed in terms of the environmental impact categories that have to be assessed. Here, the precise contribution of each life cycle stage to each of these impact categories is measured as precisely as possible. Finally, the fourth step involves interpreting the results and, if necessary, finding potential corrective measures to limit the environmental impact. Figure 2 provides a representation of these four steps for the fictitious example of a cup of ground coffee.

Figure 2.

Fictitious Life Cycle Assessment example for a cup of ground coffee.

Clearly, the product’s life cycle as defined by the LCA is very different from the traditional life cycle perspective used in marketing. This traditional perspective restricts the product’s life to its interaction with the marketplace, described by the following stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline (see Levitt, 1965). The LCA provides a much wider horizon of the product’s life, allowing a better grasp of the potential impact that a given product has on the natural environment. Therefore, making students and future managers adopt the LCA perspective may help them become more aware of the environmental impacts of the products they manage and, therefore, influence them to change the patterns of production or consumption of these products in order to contribute to a better environment.

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment Into Marketing Education

Utilizing LCA as a framework to promote the integration of environmental sustainability into marketing considerations demands a significant change of perspective compared to traditional marketing courses. Moreover, LCA may require the introduction and use of a number of technical concepts that may appear off-putting to marketing-focused students (e.g., green production processes). For these two reasons, a passive learning experience (e.g., lectures), while providing students with objective information, is likely to limit the attention allocated by students (Carnell, 2007).

Experiential Learning

Experiential learning is defined as a process by which “knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (Kolb, 1984, p. 41). Experience plays an important role in the learning process, as knowledge creation results from active involvement in a problem or scenario, requiring the development of a solution. This approach is widely used in contemporary higher education, as students are increasingly encouraged to apply knowledge and to critically analyze and create meaning from that acquired knowledge (Chavan, 2011). In the classroom, experience can take various forms, such as the problem-solving approach (consisting of small exercises, bigger case studies, or business games; see Li, Greenberg, & Nicholls, 2007), the role-playing approach (where students role-play different stakeholders in a specific situation that has to be sorted out; see Nastas, 1984), or the debate approach (requiring students to find arguments to defend their points and to organize these arguments in a logical and convincing way; see Roy & Macchiette, 2005).

The orientation of marketing education toward employability and application of theory to practice has meant that students derive great value from experiential learning (Kneale, 2009). As such, experiential learning has been a technique utilized in a variety of different contexts; shopping behavior (Morgan & McCabe, 2012), principles of marketing (Drea, Singh, & Engelland, 1997), viral marketing (Payne, Campbell, Bal, & Piercy, 2011), marketing strategy (Razzouk, Seitz, & Rizkallah, 2003), brand management (Craciun & Corrigan, 2010), marketing ethics (Hunt & Laverie, 2004), consumer behavior (Titus & Petroshius, 1993), and marketing and environmental issues (Wiese & Sherman, 2011).

However, an experiential learning strategy should not be treated as an “add-on” to existing passive methods. Rather, such a strategy should permeate the entire learning process in a given context. In particular, Armstrong and Mahmud (2008) show that experiential learning theory suggests that it is not sufficient to simply involve students in an experience to create knowledge. Rather, experience has to be examined through a reflective observation process in order for individuals to be able to provide meaning to this experience. Reflecting on experience is therefore as important as experiencing itself in the experiential learning method.

Applying Experiential Learning Using “Serious Games”

Despite its pedagogical potential, the practical application of experiential learning has proven difficult (Bobbitt, Inks, Kemp, & Mayo, 2000). One tool that has been shown to successively realize the potential of experiential learning is the simulation method and, more precisely, the use of what are known as “serious games.” Originating from the early work of Abt (1970), serious games are defined as

an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context [ . . . ] These games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement. (p. 452)

More recently, Crookall (2010) defined serious games as simulations of situations that are experienced by individuals for an educational purpose and proposed the use of “simulations for training and learning,” “educational games,” or “game-based learning activities” as alternative labels for this technique. While the rise in use of computer technology and advanced video graphics lends itself to the development of digital simulations, “serious games” do not have to be computer based. With or without the digital component, the use of serious games has proven to be an effective technique to achieve experiential learning and provides “the confluence of systemic knowledge, practice, emotional involvement, and social embeddedness that creates the potential to achieve results that no other methods can match” (Hofstede, de Caluwé, & Peters, 2010, p. 824).

As stated earlier, experiential learning specialists insist on the fact that a postexperience reflective thinking stage is necessary to learn from experience. That is, “People seldom learn from their experience unless that experience is examined as a means of providing meaning as they see it” (Armstrong & Mahmud, 2008, p. 192). Similarly, scholars of simulations and serious games state that “the learning comes from the debriefing, not from the game” (Crookall, 2010, p. 907) and assert that a reflective thinking stage is necessary in serious games. This stage is referred to as “debriefing.”

Description of the Teaching and Learning Method

We developed a serious game called “Life Cycle Perceptions (LCP)” in partnership with the company Ernst and Young, subsequently receiving the approval of the United Nations Education Program for Development. The aim of LCP is to enable students to experience the LCA approach. As such, teams of students compete to recreate the LCA of an everyday product and to propose the most efficient measures to limit the product’s environmental impact. We implemented this game within a “Principles of Marketing” module for undergraduate marketing students. The general objectives were the following: (a) to broaden the view that future managers have about the product they may have to manage in their future career, (b) to make them aware that any and all of their marketing actions may have a direct impact on the environment, and (c) to develop their knowledge about how to assess and reduce this impact.

“Life Cycle Perception”: Module Organization and Sequence

While there are various ways in which one could organize a module involving LCP; the game in the implementation described here was played by students only during the first session of the module. Therefore, this module design necessitates a long first session, which in our experience can last an entire day. The subsequent sessions of the module follow a more conventional marketing curriculum, where each session addresses a specific marketing management topic (e.g., advertising, pricing, or retailing). However, the experience and the knowledge acquired during the participation in LCP during the first session are used to tackle each topic of the following sessions through the prism of the LCA perspective. Table 1 provides an overview of the module description.

Table 1.

Module Description.

Session 1—LCP Serious Game: Reconstruction of the LCA of a product						Following sessions
Step 1 Goal and scope definition	Step 2 Life cycle inventory	Step 3 Impact assessment	Step 4 Result interpretation	Step 5 Reflective thinking	Step 6 End of session	Each session covers a traditional marketing management topic (new product development, advertising, packaging, price, promotions, etc.)
1. Presentation of the game (Instructors)	1. First ad hoc recollection of the product life (Students)	1. Analysis of activities generating CO₂ at each stage (Students assisted by Instructors)	1. Allocation of corrective measures to the stakeholders (Students assisted by Instructors)	1. Computation of accuracy score for each team (Instructor)	1. Linking with the following sessions (Instructors)	1. Each session starts with an interactive discussion based on the results of the serious game played in Session 1, focusing on the aspects linked to the session’s specific topic
2. Presentation of the product, life cycle boundaries, and environmental impact categories to assess (Instructors)	2. Organization of the product life in stage (Students assisted by Instructors)	2. Decision about the impact relative repartition for each stage (Students)	2 Attribution of an impact score to each corrective measure (Students)	2. Debrief, gap analysis, and reflective thinking (Instructors and Students)		2. Each traditional topic is tackled through the prism of its environmental impact on the environment (see Table 2)

Note. LCP = Life Cycle Perceptions; LCA = Life Cycle Assessment.

Session 1: The LCP Serious Game

Students are split into groups¹ around tables, and the game interface is placed on the table (see Figure 3 for a description of the game board and the different game elements mentioned in the article²). At this point, students are not aware of the LCA principle as they will have to discover it by themselves. From this point onward, the game starts and follows six steps: the four steps of the LCA method described earlier (goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory, impact assessment, and results interpretation), a fifth step, and a sixth step linking the experiential learning activity to the ensuing module sessions.

Figure 3.

Description of Life Cycle Perceptions.

Step 1: Scope definition

The objective of the game is first presented to students. They are told that they will have to list and describe the successive stages that a product goes through during its life and assess the impact of these stages on the environment. The product to be studied is then presented (the serious game allows the instructor to use different products such as orange juice, insulation fiber, or paper bag). The scope of the product life (system boundaries) has to be defined clearly. Generally, the entire product life is considered, but it is possible to imagine a narrower set of boundaries if the instructor wishes. Finally, the categories of environmental impacts that students will have to assess are defined (i.e., CO₂ emission, energy consumption, or water use).

Step 2: Life cycle inventory

This is the step where students become independently active, as it involves a set of analyses and decisions that will be decisive for success in the game. First, students have to share their own reflections and knowledge within their group, in order to construct a collective perception of the product’s life. As no indication should be given by the instructor, this product life recollection can take any form (e.g., bullet points, narrative description), depending on the spontaneous and unconstrained way of thinking in each group. This phase is important as students are, often for the first time, put in the position of interrogating themselves about the actual life of a product.

Second, after a certain amount of time (depending on the time available for the session), the instructor visits each team and asks students to organize their product life description in terms of a sequence of named stages. Instructors have cards representing numerous stages of the product life cycle that can be customized with the names chosen by the students. When students mention a stage, the instructor then places the card representing the cited stage on a circle represented on the board. This represents a visual support for students.³ This step ends when the group thinks it has reconstructed the entire life cycle. However, participants do not know how many stages (i.e., cards) compose the life cycle. They can therefore cite too few or too many stages. They can also cite either accurate or inaccurate stages.⁴ Participants are given the opportunity to review their final answers (by adding or removing stages) until they have reached a sequence of stages that accurately represents their group’s collective perception of the product life cycle.

During this second set of decisions, the level of involvement of the instructor can vary. If students struggle to form the product life, the instructor can attempt to guide them with some well-chosen clues. However, it is important to remain careful not to bias the competition among teams. This is also why intergroup communication must be restricted during this phase so as to avoid a biased representation of students’ perceptions.

Step 3: Impact assessment

At this stage, students have in front of them a series of cards representing stages. The next task consists of assessing the relative environmental impact of each of these stages. However, because such a task may sound unfeasible to marketing students, who may feel they have little knowledge about such issues, the task is broken down into two parts.

First, students must discuss in their groups the industrial or human activities linked to each listed stage. More especially, they are asked to list all the natural resources used and all the potential harmful emissions they can think of for each of the listed stages. This group discussion should allow them to form a more concrete idea of the environmental impact that they will attempt to evaluate. Instructors may be involved at this stage. Relying on information given by the game regarding the actual LCA of the studied product, instructors can decide to disclose part of this information in order to guide students if needed be.

The second task is to transform this impact description into a numerical impact assessment. It is clarified that students are not expected to provide exact absolute levels of environmental impact. Rather, they are asked for a relative impact assessment. Regarding CO₂ emission for instance, student must distribute this impact across the different stages as percentages of the total emission. This attribution process is helped by the use of colored tokens that the students have to place in front of each defined stage to identify the relative impacts.⁵ Ideally, instructors should not be involved in this decision so as to let the group take responsibility for the final decision based on the previous analysis. At the end of this step, groups will then have recreated the different stages of the life cycle of the products and attributed the corresponding levels of environmental impact. Of course, this attribution will depend on the composition of the life cycle stage elaborated by the different teams during the previous steps.

Step 4: Results interpretation

During this step, groups are asked to suggest different corrective measures that stakeholders could implement to reduce the environmental impact for each stage of the reconstructed product life cycle. Three types of stakeholders are considered: (a) the firm that commercializes the product, (b) public authorities regulating the market in which the firm operates, and (c) consumers who purchase, use, and dispose of the product. Instructors can suggest some broad ideas regarding these corrective measures (e.g., product or process innovation for the firm, new regulation for public authorities, or change of consumption habits for consumers). Groups have to make two main sets of decisions at this stage. First, they have to determine which corrective measures they think are the most appropriate to reduce the environmental impact identified during the previous steps of their analysis and write down these different measures on sticky notes, placing them on the board in front of the corresponding reconstructed stages of the life cycle. Second, groups have to rate these measures by a score ranging between 1 and 10, representing the extent to which the measure can contribute to reduce the concerned impact. Given the number of measures attributed to each of the three main stakeholders (firm, state, consumer), and the weighting scores of these measures, it is possible to compute how participants perceive each stakeholder as the potential source of improvement for each specific stage of the life cycle.

Step 5: Results, debriefing, and reflective thinking

Up to this point, the groups have performed three tasks: reconstruction of the product life cycle, assessment of the environmental impact of each stage of the life cycle, and proposition of corrective measures for these impacts. A score for accuracy and correspondence to reality is computed for each task by the instructor(s). The overall game score for each group is the sum of these three scores. The winning team is the one whose overall score is the highest. It is however possible to designate winners for each part of the task (e.g., the team that describes the life cycle most accurately is not always the team that assesses the environmental impact most accurately).

It is important to perform the debrief phase before revealing the winning team (since, in the authors’ experience, attention is diverted to unrelated considerations once the students know the winner). The debrief phase begins with the introduction of the LCA concept and its importance as a tool commonly adopted by firms to evaluate their environmental impact. As the actual way of performing an LCA follows the same steps as the game, students can then give more sense to the activities they have performed during the entire session.

This leads to the “gap analysis” where the actual LCA (the actual stages, the actual environmental impacts, and the most efficient potential corrective measures as detected by experts) of the studied product category is made visible alongside the answers given by the groups. Instructors then assist students in analyzing the reasons for these gaps. For example, which stages have been omitted? Which activities have been missed in the inventory describing each stage? Of central importance is encouraging students to discuss the explanation for these gaps. In other words, why do students think they overestimated the impact of one specific stage and in turn underestimated others? Students are asked to reflect on their personal experiences, which may explain the development of misconceptions or biased perceptions of the impact of this specific product category. Through this discussion, students will engage in reflection, and as such, they will co-create the meaning of the game experience. Once this is done, the winner of the game is announced.

Step 6: End of the session—Relation between LCA and marketing practice

To conclude, it is useful to link the student experience of the game with the content of the course that will be developed during the rest of the module. Instructors have the opportunity to explain how the various marketing activities can affect different stages of the life cycle. This helps in teaching the message that managing a brand does not only relate to making decisions relative to consumer perceptions and purchases of a brand, but it also includes making decisions that will have environmental implications on the whole cycle of the product life. This is the main message of the LCP method (and of this article).

Following Sessions

The subsequent sessions of the module follow a more usual format. They cover central marketing management topics such as new product development, segmentation and positioning, advertising and communication, price setting, or retail strategy. However, these topics are not treated in the traditional way. Indeed, the learning experience acquired by students during the LCP serious game in Session 1 is used in each following session to emphasize the basic elements of sustainability and environmental protection that are linked directly to the marketing activities discussed during the session. A part of the session is dedicated to showing students how environmental impacts can be limited or even beneficial. Table 2 lists the different elements that show how, through usual marketing activities, managers can positively weight on environmental resources preservation. This new way of presenting main marketing topics helps to show (future) managers how they have the power and the opportunity to “change their world.”

Table 2.

Impact of Marketing Decisions on LCA.

	Raw-material extraction	Production	Distribution	Consumption	Disposal
New Product Development	Green procurement	Eco-design of product and services from production to disposal
Advertising	Environmental labeling on components and impacts		Consumer/customer education		Information on reuse/recycling
Packaging	Use of recycled material	Logistic efficiency (e.g., cube utilization, tare weight, enablement of efficient transportation)			On-pack information on reuse/recycling
Price	Global cost reasoning (integrating the external costs linked to ecological impacts and compensation)			Compensation programs (such as CO₂ compensation)	Include and indicate collecting and recycling costs
Promotions	—	—	Promotion and incitation of green purchases and behaviors (such as the 3R: reduce, reuse, recycle)
Retail Strategy	Choice of local resources	Choice of local production	Shortening of the retailing chains	Efficient after sale services to increase product lifetime	Collection and recycling solutions (like bins) on the retail point

Note. LCA = Life Cycle Assessment.

A Study of the Effectiveness of LCP

To study the effectiveness of LCP, a questionnaire survey was administered to a sample of students that attended a module using LCP as described above. The sample size was 153 senior (final year) undergraduate students. Questions were designed to assess three particular dimensions of LCP’s intended impact: (a) how it changed students’ perceptions of, interest in, and perceived personal influence on issues regarding sustainability and environmental impact issues; (b) how it changed students’ perceptions of firms’ and marketing’s influence on the environment, as well as their behavioral intentions as future managers; and (c) the level of students’ satisfaction derived from the experiential learning experience. For the first two dimensions, we followed the procedure adopted by Morgan and McCabe (2012) by administering questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of the term and comparing the answers. The third dimension was measured using questions asked at the end of the term only.

The Life Cycle Perception: An “Open My Eyes Effect”

The first part of the questionnaire (7-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 [I don’t agree at all] to 7 [I totally agree]) measured participants’ perceptions relative to their own personal concern, interest, and perceived personal influence regarding natural environment protection. Table 3 provides the corresponding questionnaire items as well as the means and standard deviations of scores collected at the beginning and at the end of the term. Those measures are accompanied by significances of the paired sample t tests comparing these scores.

Table 3.

Students’ Personal Perceptions About Environmental Issues.

Items	Beginning of term	End of term	Diff. Sig.
I am concerned about sustainability issues	4.41 (1.83)	5.46 (1.18)	.000
I am concerned about natural environment preservation	4.92 (1.53)	5.24 (1.29)	.042
I am interested in learning more about sustainability	4.46 (1.72)	5.60 (1.06)	.000
I am interested in learning more about natural environment preservation	5.01 (1.64)	5.53 (1.08)	.001
As a consumer, I have a substantial influence on natural environment preservation	3.48 (1.87)	4.79 (1.54)	.000
As a citizen, I have a substantial influence on natural environment preservation	3.57 (1.83)	4.94 (1.31)	.000

Note. Values in parentheses are standard deviations.

The first two items measure the evolution of student personal involvement toward the themes of sustainability and natural environment preservation. Results show that in both cases, students feel more involved in these two issues at the end than at the beginning. The two following items measure the interest and the curiosity that students have developed for the future about the themes of sustainability and natural environment preservation. Here again, t tests show that the level of interest is significantly higher after the module than before. The last two items of Table 3 measure the students’ perceived personal influence on natural environment preservation, as consumers and as citizens. Once again, t tests show that, at the end of the term, students become aware of the influence their individual actions can have on the environment preservation.

This analysis has been completed by the collection of open questions, where students had to explain what the module brought them regarding the perception they have of their own influence on the environment. Some verbatim are very eloquent and clearly illustrate the awareness provided by the module.

This module opened my eyes regarding my own power on environment change. I had no idea of the weight my consumption activities had on the environment.

The generation of corrective measures that we had to perform made me realize how consumers can contribute to environmental protection, through the way they consume products, as well as through the way they can put pressure on firms and governments.

Who Can Influence Environmental Issues? Evolving Perspectives

The second part of the questionnaire (7-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 [I don’t agree at all] to 7 [I totally agree]) measures the evolution of students’ perceptions regarding the role that firms, marketing themselves as future managers should and could play in environmental issues. Table 4 provides the corresponding questionnaire items as well as the means, standard deviations, and paired sample t tests significance.

Table 4.

Students’ Perceptions of Firms’ and Marketing’s Influence on Environmental Issues.

Items	Beginning of term	End of term	Diff. Sig.
It is possible to reduce the environmental impact of firms’ activity	3.90 (1.79)	5.10 (1.37)	.000
Firms should be concerned about the environmental impact of the products made by their firm	4.15 (1.96)	5.32 (1.49)	.000
Marketing has an influence on the environmental impact of firm’s products	3.05 (1.57)	5.11 (1.21)	.000
Marketers can integrate environment preservation concerns in their professional activity	2.84 (1.39)	4.77 (1.45)	.000
As a future manager, I will have an influence on the environmental impact of the products I will in charge of	2.95 (1.43)	5.50 (1.16)	.000
As a future manager, I know how to have an influence on the environmental impact of the products I will in charge of	2.51 (1.07)	4.81 (1.57)	.000

Note. Values in parentheses are standard deviations.

The first two items measure the evolution of the perceived power and the expected level of concern of firms about environmental protection. Results show that student perception of the possibility that firms and managers have to reduce their environmental impact has significantly evolved from the beginning to the end of the term. The following two items measure the perceived influence that marketing can have on this environmental reduction. Here again, t tests show that this perceived influence is higher after the module than before. Finally, results regarding the last two items of Table 3 show that, at the end of the term, students perceive themselves as more environmentally concerned managers and have a better idea about how they can control their environmental impact.

The Effectiveness of LCP as an Experiential Learning Method

The last part of the questionnaire captures the benefits that the students perceive as having derived from the LCP game itself and the experiential learning activity. These questions were only asked at the end of the term, and answers were measured on a scale ranging from −5 (I do not agree at all) to +5 (I totally agree). The “0” score was marked as the neutral score. To study if students’ perceptions about the serious game were positive, we ran one-sample t test to check if students’ answers were significantly superior to “0,” the neutral score. Questionnaire items, means, standard deviations, and one-sample test significances are provided in Table 5.

Table 5.

Students’ Evaluation of LCP.

Items	Mean score	Comparison with neutral score (Sig.)
I am more knowledgeable about the environmental impact of products	3.08 (1.34)	.000
I am more knowledgeable about the LCA principle	3.75 (1.17)	.000
The LCA game was interesting	2.10 (2.18)	.000
The LCA game was enjoyable	2.21 (2.02)	.000
I enjoyed working with my team	.90 (2.14)	.000
Overall, I am satisfied with the module	3.08 (1.63)	.000

Note. LCP = Life Cycle Perceptions; LCA = Life Cycle Assessment. Values in parentheses are standard deviations.

Results regarding the first two items show that the serious game has a significant positive impact on students’ perceived knowledge regarding environmental issues and LCA. Results regarding the three following items show that students significantly found the serious game interesting and enjoyable and that they enjoyed their teamwork experience. Finally, results regarding the last item show that the overall student satisfaction regarding the serious game has been significantly positive.

Discussion

In this article, we presented an innovative way of making students more aware of the role that marketing can have on natural environment preservation. This method is based on the use of LCP, a “serious game” that the students experience in their first session. Through this experiential game, they discover the notion of Life Cycle Assessment, integrating the degree of environmental impact caused by each stage of a significantly expanded notion of the product’s life cycle. This allows students to realize that the decisions they take about products as brand managers have not only implications on the marketplace and consumers but also on different material issues that affect the environment. After this first experiential session, the following sessions cover the usual marketing topics. However, references to environmental issues from the first session are made throughout. The idea here is not to completely change the marketing curriculum. It is rather to open students’ horizons and make them realize that there is a larger world outside the marketplace context, on which marketing strongly impacts. Our analysis shows that the use of the LCP game in conjunction with a dedicated course reaches its objectives in terms of changing students’ personal attitudes and interest for natural environment preservation and in terms of enhancing students’ awareness that firms and marketing departments can play a significant role in this environment preservation. Importantly, students enjoy this experiential method.

An ongoing debate exists regarding whether sustainability should be integrated into core marketing modules across the curriculum or developed as a standalone subject (Audebrand, 2010). While our own personal experiences of LCP have used it in one specific module (e.g., principles of marketing), it would be possible to run it as a core session for different modules (e.g., specific functional specialism such as communications) and thus ensure that all concerned modules use this experience to make students aware of the environmental issues related to specific marketing tools. In the context of the present study, the debate is not particularly relevant, since it is likely that benefit will accrue whether a specific or broad policy is followed. What is certain, however, is that it is of central importance to increase student knowledge of environmental sustainability, to challenge student views, and to encourage the analysis of student assumptions about marketing, the environment, and society (Stubbs & Cocklin, 2008).

The Challenge of Sustainability for the Firm

As shown by past research, consumers have increasingly favorable opinions on sustainability and, specifically, issues related to natural environment protection (Oates et al., 2008). The mere association between a brand and environmental cues improves attitudes toward the brand (e.g., Montoro-Rios, Luque-Martínez, & Rodríguez-Molina, 2008). However, consumers are becoming cognizant of increasing “greenwashing” by some firms, associating their brands or product with sustainable messages, even if this association is dubious. This leads to an increasing incredulity by consumers toward “green advertising” and even negative evaluations of brands that are perceived (sometimes incorrectly) as “greenwashers” (Chan, 2000). A better understanding of these issues by marketers may help them become more attuned to their consumers’ values.

However, consumers do not represent only the stakeholders to put pressure on firms to adopt environmentally friendly practices. Policy makers, pressure groups, and assorted nongovernmental organizations are also pushing in this direction, toward the creation of new regulations aimed at rewarding well-behaving firms and punishing recalcitrant organizations. Some of these new national regulations or international standards have direct implications for marketers. For instance, International Standard ISO26000, released in 2010, provides guidelines for social responsibility. Some of these guidelines aim at educating the client regarding the different aspects of sustainability and social responsibility. Marketers who can easily grasp the different aspects of the environmental (or social) impact of their products will be one step ahead in this domain.

Sustainability and Students’ Employability

The consequences of the previously mentioned challenges can be seen clearly in different activities within firms and, in particular, in the recruitment process of graduates. A report by the UK Higher Education Academy shows that recruiters are more and more looking for “sustainability literate candidates” (Sayce, Clements, & Cowling, 2009). This supports our conviction that increasing sustainability in business curriculums has a positive impact on students’ employability.

Furthermore, evolving firm-level marketing activities also exhibit concern for such issues. For example, Coca-Cola puts an important emphasis on sustainability as a major part of its website. Most of the elements linked to the environmental impacts of their products are explicated in detail (e.g., water and energy use, recycle packaging, recycling, or CO₂ emission) as well as any corrective measures to reduce this impact. It is easy to find other large companies that are placing similar emphasis on sustainability in their communications to the general public (e.g., Toyota, Unilever, and IBM). Of course, the main tasks of a marketer in this company will not be to focus on these issues but rather to find ways of developing new markets, gain bigger competitive advantages, and build effective communication campaigns. However, it seems clear that a good understanding of sustainability issues and the impact of a firm’s activities on the environment is a significant plus for a potential recruit.

However, we believe that the technical level of training on sustainability for business students should not be overemphasized. Indeed, firms still want to recruit students specialized in marketing to develop the strategy of their brands. In other words, it is not suitable to transform business students into engineers specialized in green technologies. Even so, business schools must, in some way, engage themselves in the development of educational methods that lead students to understand the environmental impact of firm activities and the role that business can play in the reduction of this impact. This is exactly the objective of the LCP serious game presented in this article.

Limitations and Future Research

This article has several limitations that represent promising directions for future research. First, the present article focuses on the effort for minimizing the environmental impact of business activities and the protection of natural resources. However, sustainability is defined as a three-dimensional concept composed of an economic, an environmental, and a social dimension (Savitz & Weber, 2006). To put it succinctly, sustainability concerns the building of an enduring economic stability, while ensuring respect for the natural environment and maximizing the well-being of individuals. While LCP focuses on the environmental dimension with the economic dimension also taken into account by marketers as they have to be more and more accountable for their decisions (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004), the social dimension could be argued as somewhat lacking. It would be very interesting to broaden the scope of the product life cycle assessment by measuring not only the environmental impact of marketing decisions during the stages of the product life cycle but also measuring the social impact.

Second, the study assessing the effectiveness of our learning and teaching method only uses a sample of students that participated in LCP. This decision has been taken for ethical issues. In the conditions of our study, we were not allowed to expose different groups of students to different learning and teaching methods as final exams were common to all students. Given the positive results uncovered herein, several ways to further assess the effectiveness of this method are possible. A first solution would be to have the authorization to expose a group of students to a “Principles of Marketing” module with the LCP game and another group to a module without the game. The comparison between the answers of both groups would be very fruitful. Another interesting solution would be to perform a longitudinal study by surveying students having participated in the game once they have become actual marketing managers. This would allow analysis to see if the LCP training made a difference in the actual decision-making processes.

Finally, we are unable to present in this article the output of the groups’ participation in LCP regarding the students’ perceptions of the environmental impact of each stage of the product life cycle. It would be interesting to study the average gap between student life cycle perceptions and the actual life cycle of the product in order to see if some systematic perceptual biases can be detected. Do students systematically overestimate or underestimate some specific stages of the life cycle? If so, is it possible to uncover the reasons for these biases? Such inputs would allow professors to better frame discussions about sustainability and the environmental impact of products, basing the discussion around students’ misconceptions and consequent knowledge needs.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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