Retail footprints and consumer voices: Sentiment analysis on decarbonisation, sustainability, and waste in online and offline shopping

Salil Seth; Mohd Irfan Pathan; Lokesh Tomar

doi:10.65453/ajbmr.153.1514

Authors

Salil Seth Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Mohd Irfan Pathan Department of Management Studies, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Lokesh Tomar Department of Management Studies, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.65453/ajbmr.153.1514

Keywords:

Decarbonization, Retailing, Sentiment Analysis, Sustainability, Waste Management.

Abstract

With climate change drawing global attention, grounded conceptualization about consumer perceptions of waste management, sustainability, and decarbonization in the retail sector becomes paramount. Also, the retail sector, comprising both online and offline counterparts, plays a crucial role in shaping ecological outcomes through its decarbonization tactics, waste minimization regimes, and sustainable practices. The objective of this paper is to decode consumer reviews (voices) for tracing retail carbon footprints in terms of decarbonization efforts, waste management practices, and sustainability principles by performing sentiment analysis using the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model for examining sentiment polarity. The consumer-generated content from social media posts and customer reviews on the review page of websites was analyzed. The sentiments were classified as positive, neutral, and negative after collecting the data, pre-processing it, and its subsequent analysis. The deep contextual embeddings of BERT have established themselves as an accurate tool for capturing the nuanced expressions about sustainability initiatives and retail practices. The results of the study reveal significant variations in the consumer sentiments between their online and offline shopping experiences. In offline contexts, waste management practices garner critical attention, whereas in online mode, both sustainability and decarbonization witness higher sentiment positivity. The findings also underscore that perceived greenwashing and superfluous waste management strategies trigger negative perceptions, whereas visible green practices, transparent communication, and consumer engagement evoke positive sentiments. Via integration of sentiment analytics and ecological impact themes, this paper heralds’ actionable insights for social advocacy of environmentalism and imbibitions of eco-centrism in the retail sector at large.

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