EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MARKETING ON FOOD WASTE BEHAVIOR IN SAUDI ARABIA - ASSIGNMENT SOLUTION

 Introduction

Food waste and food loss have been recognized to be one of the most challenging predicaments currently facing world today with serious repercussion on environment and sustainability. Roughly, around 1.3 billion tons of food (about one third of food production) is wasted annually around the world. In a world, where approximately 925 million people still go hungry, reduction in food waste and food loss has been recognized as a key to global food security and sustainable food lifecycle (Abiad & Meho, 2018). Recently, efforts are being made on governmental and private level for reducing food waste so that its negative impact on environment can be achieved. According to Oelofse and Nahman (2013), in a world where many people suffer from undernourishment, food loss and food waste are creating serious ethical dilemmas. 

The grim food waste condition is not different in the Arab countries where the food waste generated per person exceeds 210 kg per year in 2018 as compared to only 184 kg per person in 2017 (Abiad & Meho, 2018). Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) recognizes the grave food wastage condition in the country and reviews its negative impact on economy and environment (Baig, Khodran, Felicitas, Gary, & Marie, 2018). According to Whitman (2016), the Saudi Ministry of Environment Water and Agriculture estimated approximately $13 billion as a cost of food waste in KSA. According to Baig et al. (2019), the top disposed items in KSA were bakery items (53%), vegetables (25%), fruits (24%) and poultry (22%) in 2018. This supports the perishability idea showing that all consumable food that perishes sooner is wasted at particularly higher rates. 

According to COMCEC (2017), Saudi Arabia consumes large volumes of food of which around 35% is wasted. Therefore, it is considered to be one of the main producers of food waste in world where approximately 1.65 million tons of food is wasted per year. The table 1 below shows estimated amount of food waste generated, on average, by a Saudi household per year (COMCEC, 2017). Similarly, figure 1 below shows the ranking of countries based on their policies towards addressing food waste issue. The higher the score, the better the country is on path towards addressing issue related to food waste. It seems that Saudia Arabia, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates and India possess lower values hence indicating ineffective strategies towards managing food waste (Mu’azu et al., 2018). 

Environmental practitioners argue that food waste effect on environment is worse as food decomposition releases methane and other greenhouse gases that lead to global warming by 34 times as compared to carbon dioxide (Alruqaie & Alharbi, 2012). This concern highlights the need for food recycling so that sustainable food systems can be developed. For this purpose, the concepts of social marketing and moral disengagement theory have emerged globally (Elaward et al., 2018; Pearson & Prera, 2018). The focus of social marketing lies in the changing behaviors of individuals so that environmental sustainability and food sustainability could be achieved through emphasizing on less use of resources (Elawad, Agied, Althani, & Abusin, 2018). Drawing attention to the issue of food waste is critical to the success of social marketing campaigns. These promotional efforts (advertising, public relations, direct marketing, social marketing etc.) work effectively when combined with other marketing efforts. 

As much as social marketing campaigns for reducing food waste are concerned, the actual change can only be seen when people start owning their actions and contributions towards bringing change so that food loss can be prevented and food wastage can be reduced (Elawad, Agied, Althani, & Abusin, 2018). Food loss and food waste are two faces of one coin with slight difference. According to Gustafsson et al. (2011), food loss is described as decrease in edible food quantity or quality during the phases of processing, harvesting and production. However, Pfaltzgraff et al. (2013) defined food waste as the amount of cooked, raw or uncooked edible food that ends up being unconsumed or discarded at the consumer end of the food chain process. For the purpose of this paper, food waste concept is used to define the lack of social marketing and moral disengagement theory based study revolving around food waste in Saudi Arabia.