Marketing to Develop Environmental Sustainability, Awareness, and Action

Background

The world has witnessed significant changes through various types of industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution (1820-1840) brought tremendous success for India’s economic development; for instance, it used water and steam power to enhance production. The second revolution(1870-1914) laid emphasis on mass production; for instance, tele-communication changed the way India communicated using technology per se, and thus turned India into a global village. The third industrial revolution was characterised by Internet of Things (IoT), whereby it used electronics and information to automate production. The last and the current industrial revolution, the fourth in the list, lay emphasis on ‘digital revolution’.

All the industrial revolutions witnessed significant growth on several important aspects of life, and the world strode forward boldly, making rapid progress on the socio-economic fronts; but, whatever came, was at the cost of the planet. Hence, sustainability and social innovation has thus become the need of the hour, adding another dimension to the fourth industrial revolution (i.e. Digital Revolution), commonly known as ‘Industry 4’ in Germany.

The fourth industrial revolution also known as 4.0 is rightly termed as the ‘smart factory’ (Dutton, 2014).A smart factory consists of a physical world with a decentralized form of decision-making. Industry 4.0 is concerned with various trends like digitization and connectivity (Horx 2015; Huer, 2015) It is also called ‘sustainability revolution’ as it can solve problems of the people and the planet. It involves disruptive technologies such as internet of things, robotics, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It is the first of its kind with major emphasis on sustainability. Unlike Previous industrial revolutions were thrust down in the system in order to improve the socio- economics of the country, but unfortunately, this was at the cost of adhering to sustainability.