Green value proposition (GVP)

Current market drives a GVP with increasing expectations from the public at large. The GVP is mainly related to products and services offered by a particular company and what is more appealing to clients. Participants expressed the GVP differently and used a wide range descriptions to explain it (refer to Figure 5-1 above for more details). Typical descriptions included the resilience of the products and services, or the GVP being future proof, especially in today’s world where we are faced by a scarcity of resources. In addition, the GVP offers low costs in operation and this is highly relevant to the clients who maintain an ownership of their buildings. Another description, provided by the participants, related to that fact that some companies do offer the GVP to solve a client’s or a market’s problem. For example, C1 from the contractor group stated “relate offering more closely to resolving issues created by legislation/ regulation.”

The GVP can also be described as a low carbon and efficiency value. The participants confirmed the importance of achieving low carbon targets for future development. For example, the UK sets targets to reduce the GHG by a fifth of current levels by 2020 and the construction industry has a huge part to play in these reductions because 50% of UK GHS emissions come from running buildings and 10% of UK emissions come from producing building materials. Another example is the Green League which has two main categories to rank universities and within each category there are several sub categories. The first category is policy where carbon management is a sub category. The second category is concerned with performance and again a sub category is dedicated to carbon emissions. The above examples can demonstrate the importance of carbon

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issues. All of these can be clearly related to the fact that carbon dioxide - CO2 is a major

contributor to climate change which is widely accepted as being a reality and identified as the global threat of the 21st century. On the efficiency side, the GVP is often described as a cost effective solution where companies strive to reduce waste and improve processes which will result in lower internal costs and hence a lower price for clients.

The GVP is described by the participants as a responsible offer where supply/provider companies will offer the clients what they need and they will acknowledge all the advantages and disadvantages that come with the GVP. Therefore, companies will have a responsibility towards its clients by offering the best value.

Some of the participants suggested that companies can have two offers which are a standard offer and a green offer where they emphasise all the added value that can be achieved through the GVP.

One of the participants suggested that the perception of a particular company of the GVP is vital to pass on to clients and to meet their expectations. This result is echoed in a previous research conducted by Abd, Hamid and Kamar (2012). They stated that one of the challenges of adopting sustainable construction is that companies do not know how to act upon the sustainability value “Although the values are generally at the right place, the problem is how to enact them” (Cited in Abuzeinab and Arif, 2013).

AR1 from the architect group raised an important point in which he stated that “We deliver practical and deliverable solutions that are scalable.” The feature of scalability is important because green solutions are yet to be considered as a unique solution and in most cases are hard to replicate.

It can therefore be concluded in view of the foregoing that:

 The GVP is related to the offer and the unique selling point of a product or service. To offer the GVP to a potential client, it becomes vital for the provider company to understand the GVP well. This understanding plays an important role and thus each one of the companies has to know ’why we are doing it’, because clients in general ’buy why you do rather than what you do’.

 The GVP should be created to meet clients’ need or to solve their problems. Good companies have the ability to tailor the GVP according to clients’ need

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and they acknowledge there is no single model or solution to the green problems. In other words, the GVP starts externally from clients’ need but it needs to be created internally by the provider. Although the GVP is always triggered by clients, companies can approach and inform potential clients of the benefits of the GVP, hence accessing new markets.

 With the rise of fuel prices, cost savings, in the operational phase of a building with the GVP, have encouraged more stakeholders including clients to ask for green because they see a long-term economic benefit (Bartlett & Howard, 2000).This is pertinent for the clients who maintain an ownership of their buildings and who have an interest in their building performance such as local authorities, universities, or clients who have large physical assets to maintain. In addition, there are successful examples of owner-occupier models where the owner concentrates on the building performance and life cycle cost rather than the capital cost. However, commercial developers who build to sell may not be interested in how their buildings perform. Therefore, new ways of valuing property are needed as well as more incentive schemes or tax breaks for well performing environmental buildings.

 Capturing value or profiting from green activities is always related to the GVP. Therefore, developing scalable GVPs is vital for companies’ survival.

 In order to achieve a full uptake of the GVP, it is essential to educate the market and the clients to appreciate what green value has to offer from an ethical view to cost effective and future proof products and services.

The GVP is thus always associated with TGs. The following section explains the TGs as reported by the participants and deduces the findings at the end of it.