Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer Executive Summary

The World Economic Forum identifies a gap between consumer interest in sustainability and actual behavior, noting that sustainability is often perceived as confusing, expensive, or ineffective. The report highlights millennials—who make up 25% of the global population—as the primary opportunity for growth, specifically urban middle-class millennials in India and China, representing a potential US$ 6 trillion to US$ 7 trillion opportunity by 2030. To capture this, the report recommends six strategies: building a consumer-centric case, integrating sustainability into core marketing and R&D, creating digital collaboration platforms, activating employee advocates, and setting quantitative targets for success.

• Consumers are currently hindered from adopting sustainable lifestyles because they find the language of sustainability confusing and perceive sustainable products as being more expensive, less effective, or harder to find. To increase engagement, companies should focus on reimagining status and success, leveraging brand communities, and using celebrity endorsements to make sustainability 'cool'.
• Millennials represent a significant opportunity for sustainable consumption as they are climate-conscious, action-oriented, and the world's most influential shoppers. They comprise 25% of the global population and are expected to become the wealthiest generation.
• The urban, middle-class millennial segment in India and China is identified as the greatest opportunity for scaling sustainable consumption, with an estimated value of US$ 6 trillion to US$ 7 trillion by 2030.
• The report proposes six strategies for companies to enable sustainable lifestyles: aligning sustainability with consumer expectations, making it a core marketing activity, integrating sustainability criteria (such as water and energy efficiency) into R&D, using digital platforms for crowd-sourcing and collaboration, utilizing employees as sustainability advocates, and establishing quantitative goals to measure behavioral change and business impact.

APA

World Economic Forum (2012). Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer Executive Summary. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_RC_EngagingTomorrowsConsumer_ExecutiveSummary_2014.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer Executive Summary. 2012. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_RC_EngagingTomorrowsConsumer_ExecutiveSummary_2014.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer Executive Summary |date=2012 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_RC_EngagingTomorrowsConsumer_ExecutiveSummary_2014.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2012engaging, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Engaging Tomorrow’s Consumer Executive Summary}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2012}, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_RC_EngagingTomorrowsConsumer_ExecutiveSummary_2014.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }