With the concern over noise and air pollution rising and with governments forcing manufactures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there has been a rise in demand for electric cars with people seeking for a more sustainable way of transportation. Groupe Bollore has recently taken the European electric car market by storm through collaborating with Renault to produce Bollore’s existing electric car Bluecar. Due to intense competition from Tesla, a ten-year old Californian company producing electric cars, Bollores management have been trying to devise strategies in order to push Bluecar’s brand name forward.

Bollore markets its cars based on its unique selling point, the use of lithium – metal – polymer batteries, which the company itself claims are more powerful than the lithium-ion ones used in most electric cars. Over the past decade the company itself has spent at least 1.7 billion dollars on battery development alone. Having a unique selling point like this could give Bollore a competitive advantage. However, electric cars are still part of the niche market, and although in 2013 sales have been going up in rich countries, electrics and hybrids only account for a tiny fraction of car sales. The only way for Bollore to expand its customer base is to raise awareness among consumers the benefits of owning an electric car.

Bollore’s Bluecar

Works Cited

The primary objective for most organizations is to generate profit. That being said, most companies will do anything in order to achieve this profit. Although some corporate executives may enforce corporate social responsibilities out of pure altruism, many do it in order to enhance their brand image and/or to lower staff turnover rates. However, when the subject is not directly related to profit, many companies tend to ignore indulging in ethical behavior altogether due to the large sums of money associated with acting ethically.

However, I believe that corporations should be more farsighted in their approach as the costs for businesses of not acting ethically is even greater than that of implementing such ethical practices. Take Sauder Frosh for instance. Many bigtime newsites such as Huffignton Post have reported that UBC was “under fire” for the non-consensual rape chants that have occurred during Frosh, sparking an outrage for UBC’s internal and external stakeholders. The chants led by frosh leaders has caused the tarnishing of Sauder School’s brand image. If the Frosh leaders had acted ethically and replaced the bus cheers with healthier material, then they would not have been subjected to the costs of acting unethically such as the withdrawal of the CUS support for all future Frosh activities and the vandalism that had occurred at the Henry Angus building earlier this week (see image).

Image: Vandals hit UBC with graffiti as Sauder School of Business cuts support for frosh after ‘rape chant’