Consumer Insight

Quantifying Submerged Revenue

How Northwest River Supplies (NRS) quantified the revenue impact of sustainability using Customer Science™.

At A Glance

Client

Northwest River Supplies (NRS), the world’s leading supplier of equipment and apparel for water recreation, safety, and rescue.

Challenge

Quantifying the financial return of brand-level sustainability commitments.

Solution

Measuring real behavioral choices using Customer Science™.

Key Outcome

Double-digit preference lift for sustainable attributes, even at higher price points.

“We’ve always believed in the importance of doing business the right way, but it was still powerful to see that benefit quantified in sales-and-dollar terms.”

Mark Deming Marketing Director, NRS

The Challenge: Quantifying the Value of Sustainability to Customers

NRS has long been a leader in social responsibility, from converting to 100% employee ownership to rigorously improving supply chains. However, they had always kept these values relatively quiet, focusing instead on product performance.

The question was: Could making their deep commitment to sustainability public meaningfully increase revenues? They needed to move beyond the theory that “customers care” to a hard financial fact: how much value does the market place on sustainability versus other product attributes? Would customer awareness of the company's sustainability give it pricing power?

The Solution: Customer Science™

Valutus used its Customer Science™ methodology to quantify NRS customers' behavior. Unlike traditional surveys that ask hypothetical questions (“Would you buy this?”), this methodology measures real behavioral choices.

Experimental Process

Step 1:
Baseline

NRS products vs. Competitors

Step 2:
Attributes

Environmental / social attributes

Step 3:
Pricing

Increased price by 10%+

Measurable Lift

Product-Level Impact

Adding sustainable attributes to product descriptions delivered statistically significant lift, even with 10% price increases.

Impact of Attributes

Baseline

Price Increase

Recycled

Fair Trade

Equity Value

The Brand Effect

When the manufacturer was identified as a social and environmental leader, preference surged. Conversely, if they were the laggard, preference slumped. For NRS customers, industry leadership was an important component of their product purchase decision.

Brand Effect

Base Prod Brand

Strategic Impact

Market Expansion Potential

Double-digit percentage rise in preference linked to brand leadership.

Revenue Realization

Quantifying the Revenue

Using the InVEST™ Model, Valutus translated the preference gains into revenue effects. The analysis showed that the expected market growth from preference gains would significantly exceed the general apparel market growth rate.

The Bottom Line

For NRS, customer awareness of its sustainability activities is a direct path to revenue growth that would otherwise require significant marketing spend to achieve.

Quantifying the ROI of Sustainability