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Up-Fuse: International growth of an Egyptian eco-friendly social enterprise
Abstract
Learning outcomes
The case is meant as a way for students to develop ideas related to the challenges facing environmental eco-friendly social enterprises that sell their products in a country like Egypt where consumers are way behind considering the value of their products. In response to these challenges, students learn to evaluate the company status quo by analyzing its weaknesses, strengths and opportunities to grow and expand geographically to a new market. Students also learn about the growth expansion strategies and internationalization modes, options and associated barriers. Accordingly, they can plan the marketing strategies associated with entering this new market for up-cycled products. Objective 1: Analyze the international geographical growth alternative for an enterprise that improves its scalability applying weaknesses, strengths, threats and opportunities analysis. Objective 2: Propose a strategic plan for growth and scalability. Objective 3: Discuss the various modes of doing business in foreign countries. Recommend an internationalization mode for a social enterprise to explore in a new market. Objective 4: Assess the possible barriers associated with internationalization modes and how to overcome them. Objective 5: Propose marketing strategies for an eco-friendly enterprise to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness in the international host market. Other topics that might be discussed in this case include consumer behavior toward environmentally friendly products. Pricing challenges faced by ecologically friendly firms in developing countries.
Case overview/synopsis
Rania and Yara were inspired by Germany’s approach to waste reduction, particularly plastic bags. In 2017, after winning several competitions and awards, Up-Fuse was officially established as a social enterprise. The entrepreneurs faced great challenges selling sustainable products made of plastic waste to Egyptian consumers. Egyptian consumers were not fully aware of the value of eco-friendly products which presented a great challenge for Up-Fuse to grow and sell their products in Egypt. After shifting its pricing strategy and expanding beyond the local recycled product markets, Up-Fuse further faced fierce competition from well-established local and international brands with larger market shares. Thus, most of Up-Fuse’s sales were generated from expats and foreigners. In response to local obstacles and limitations, Rania began to consider targeting international markets. Rania thought it was the opportune time to drive growth through geographic expansion. After all, in 2020, Up-Fuse had some minor success when the co-founders experimented with exporting their products to the US market. Rania’s co-founder Yara, on the other hand, felt that the enterprise was not yet ready to enter a new market and it would be wiser to emphasize growth in the local Egyptian market. The co-founders were torn between two growth strategies. On one hand, they faced intense local competition for their products. On the other, expanding by entering a new market came with many challenges. Which growth strategy should Up-Fuse adopt? How could Up-Fuse determine which market to penetrate? What were the possible scalability challenges they faced by entering a new market? How could Up-Fuse reach and increase their international customer base abroad? What was the best marketing strategy for their products?
Complexity academic level
This case would be appropriate for graduate students enrolled in marketing, consumer behavior, international marketing, international business and social entrepreneurship courses. This case is written at a graduate level and would also be appropriate for use in customized or short programs.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CCS 5: International Business.
... (IRP, 2020) Using recycled materials can result in urban context being more environmentally friendly, require less energy, and are more cost-effective compared to using native materials (Kamal, Atef, & Mostafa, 2022). Egypt's waste output is 16.2 million tons (Ismail, Ghalwash, & El Sebaie, 2022), thus recycling is an essential solution to address the issues of limited storage space and the decreasing availability of natural resources. ...
Informal housing areas in Egypt are facing a lack of open spaces in the wake of increasing urban density. The utilization of available space is crucial for improving the environment and promoting social equality as we strive to create more resilient
and healthy residential areas.
Streets in informal housing areas have a significant impact on public life, extending beyond just the flow of vehicles. Streets constitute a substantial part of the communal open space accessible to the community. Streetscape can greatly enhance streets in informal areas and have a significant impact on their
development. Streetscape can encourage people to use outdoor spaces and increase their enjoyment, in addition to creating a welcoming, relaxed, and involved atmosphere for them.
On the other hand, Egypt has the opportunity to utilize waste materials and create a recycling system due to the large quantity of waste available. Reusing waste materials helps to decrease pollution and improve the quality of the environment, preventing waste from ending up in landfills, as well as providing significant financial benefits.
There is a mass of reclaimed materials being utilized in the creation of streetscape elements, such as wood, steel, plastic and rubber. This study explores the potential that would make the streetscape of informal housing areas more friendly to the environment by using recycled materials. The research finds a need to utilize waste recycling in streetscape which enhances the quality of life in informal housing areas in Egypt.
... A lot of Egyptian entrepreneurs faced huge challenges when they first wanted to introduce the sustainable products concept in Egypt. The Egyptians consumers were not fully aware of the value of eco-friendly garments (Ismail, Ghalwash and Sebaie, 2022). Although slow fashion is known in the European countries since the 1990s, and it is just starting to get recognized in Egypt (Abd, 2022). ...
This paper is driven by the Theory of Fashion Adoption, Self-Identity Theory, and Theory of Planned Behavior. Its purpose is to investigate the relationship between concern for eco-fashion, knowledge of eco-fashion, and the initiatives of green promotion on the willingness to pay more along with the mediation effect of environmental concern and eco-conscious consumer behavior. Additionally, their effect on purchase intentions will be examined. A non-probability convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from 561 participants. The data which was analyzed using the statistical packages, Amos and SPSS. The tests conducted
were confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. The findings showed that the eco-conscious consumer behavior partially mediates the relationship between concern about eco-fashion, knowledge of eco-fashion, and green promotion and consumers’ willingness to pay more. However, this was not the case for environmental concern. There is also a significant positive relationship between willingness to pay more and purchase intentions. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed with special reference to the context of the Covid pandemic.
Citation: Elmanadily, D., & El-Deeb, S. (2022). A Study on Consumers’ Purchase Intentions and Willingness to Pay More towards Eco-fashion Clothes. South Asian Journal of Management, 29(3), 161–190.
Services represent the fastest growing portion of the world economy, yet they are still vastly under-represented in the export packages of most countries. Services present unique challenges that make exporting potentially more difficult and riskier than for goods industries, yet they also offer huge untapped potential with very little research done in this area. This study develops hypotheses regarding the exporting decisions of services companies using qualitative interviews and the exporting literature. These are then tested through a survey of nearly 700 consulting engineering firms. Nearly 90 per cent of the exporting firms in the sample are happy with the performance of their exporting programs, yet nearly three-quarters of the firms are not exporting. Overcoming limitations in know-how and resources, developing positive attitudes about exporting, recognizing foreign opportunities and fostering management commitment to exporting are found to be the most important determinants of exporting behavior for professional services firms.
Purpose
This paper aims to consider the price premium that consumers state they are willing to pay for products with reused or recycled content. It also aims to address the effect of the impact of product category on consumers' willingness to pay premium prices.
Design/approach/methodology
Willingness to pay was studied for seven different product categories ( n =49).
Findings
Perceived functional risk is an important determinant of the price that consumers are willing to pay for products that have recycled or reused content. It was also found that consumers will switch from a recycled product to a new product within a smaller range of price for products with high functional risk.
Research limitations/implications
The study is exploratory, while it serves its purpose by raising initial questions and finding that this is a complex area that is worth studying. Additional work is clearly required to consider the wide range of potentially relevant variables and a sampling plan that ensures an understanding of the generalisability of findings across the population within a region and across regions.
Practical implications
A technique for understanding consumer willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) is provided and insights into differences are offered between products in terms of WTP for greener products. Practitioners can use this technique to determine the price range and indirectly the profitability of a version of their product based on recycled or reused content.
Originality/value
An understanding of WTP for products with recycled or reused content is developed. This is important as legislation in many countries aims at diverting disposed product from waste dumps to consumers.
b>Purpose – The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of multiple factors on the green purchase intention of customers in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual model is proposed and was subjected to empirical verification with the use of a survey of metropolitan and regional households in Victoria, Australia. The data were analyzed using both descriptive measures and exploratory factor analysis to identify and validate the items contributing to each component in the model. AMOS structural modeling was used to estimate the measure of respondents' overall perception of green products and their intention to purchase.
Findings – The results indicate that customers' corporate perception with respect to companies placing higher priority on profitability than on reducing pollution and regulatory protection were the significant predictors of customers' negative overall perception toward green products. The only positive contribution to customers' perception was their past experience with the product. Other factors including the perception of green products, product labels, packaging, and product ingredients did not appear to influence customers' perception. The results also indicate that customers are not tolerant of lower quality and higher prices of green products.
Research limitations/implications – The knowledge of the overall perception formation about green products and its predictors provides management with the facility to identify and implement strategies that may better influence the change of attitude by customers. Corporations can also benefit from the identification of the types of information required to enable management to influence this process of perception formation.
Originality/value – The present findings contributes to an understanding of the antecedents of green purchasing and highlight that green customers rely more on personal experience with the product than the information provided by the marketer.<br /
The built environment industry, being among those which generate the most pollution, offers significant opportunities to alleviate environmental pollution and promote the sustainable use of resources. The Middle East region, hindered by natural constraints and underlying political and social issues, has tried over the years to shift towards more sustainable practices in design and construction. This review article sheds light on the achievements and challenges of sustainable development in the Middle East.
With the development of green building codes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Lebanon, the Middle East region has strived to become more environmentally friendly, with record-breaking developments. The region currently has four well-established green building codes: the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council's Estidama; Dubai Municipality's Green Building Regulations; the Lebanese Green Building Council's ARZ; and GORD's GSAS: Global Sustainability Assessment System, in Qatar. Green building codes in the region demonstrate the efforts and investments of governments and organisations in streamlining sustainability in the construction industry. Whether it is for existing buildings or new construction projects, green building codes set a holistic framework that guides design teams toward reducing resource consumption, i.e., energy, water and other natural resources, all while alleviating consequent environmental pollution.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been another venue for private corporations to tackle community engagement and sustainable development. Regional CSR programmes have integrated sustainability concepts to give back to the community in which they are operating, and those initiatives include health and safety, education, eco-friendly solutions and community investments.
These efforts are hindered by natural and operational challenges that the region is forced to face. Some of the challenges faced are scarcity of water, lack of awareness in sustainability and environmental issues (despite the high education levels), and operational challenges such as retrofitting existing buildings.
Middle Eastern countries have throughout history proven their leadership and resilience with regard to all kinds of challenges, and in the realm of sustainable development are following a similar path.
The formation of organizations that are international from inception-international new ventures-is an increasingly important phenomenon that is incongruent with traditionally expected characteristics of multinational enterprises. A framework is presented that explains the phenomenon by integrating international business, entrepreneurship, and strategic management theory. That framework describes four necessary and sufficient elements for the existence of international new ventures: (1) organizational formation through internalization of some transactions, (2) strong reliance on alternative governance structures to access resources, (3) establishment of foreign location advantages, and (4) control over unique resources.
A critical issue for firms considering conducting business overseas is the choice of market entry mode. The two most widely options are exporting and foreign direct investment. This study examined a number of factors which have been suggested in the literature as important determinants of the choice between these two entry modes. Key factors examined included international business experience, immigrant effect, service requirements, and market size. The study employed a logistic regression analysis method to examine the market entry mode decisions of 124 New Zealand firms operating in a single foreign market (Taiwan). Significant factors identified included product type and proxy experience (firms' experience with Japan), and an “immigrant effect” which impacted on the choice of FDI mode.
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