Patagonia and Structural Stability
As an avid fashion enthusiast, the news about Patagonia’s founder donating his and his family’s stake in the multi-billion dollar company towards combating climate change and making the environment the number one stakeholder.
Patagonia is a clothing company that specializes in outdoor clothing and the founder, Yvon Chouniard has had a history of doing business in an unconventional way while doing the right thing. For instance, Patagonia’s Black Friday ad in 2011 instructed customers to “Don’t Buy This Jacket” as a message to consumers to stop overconsumption. The message was that to lighten everyone’s carbon footprint on the environment, us consumers, need to stop overconsumption. Nonetheless, the jacket sold out, but this solidifies Patagonia as a company that works for environmental change. With drastic news of the founder of Patagonia donating his shares towards fighting climate change, this image is exemplified even more.
The plan is to donate 2% of all shares to a new trust called the Patagonia Purpose Trust. The mission of the trust is to ensure the company stays true to its values and oversee the deliberations of donations to organizations fighting climate change. The rest of the family’s money will be donated to the Holdfast Collective, a non-profit organization that fights “environmental crisis, protects nature and biodiversity, and supports thriving communities.” (The Guardian)
This whole plan can be modeled by a network consisting of the company, the consumers, and the environment. The Strong Balance Theory states that “for every set of three nodes, if we consider the three edges connecting them, either all three of these edges are labeled +, or else exactly one of them is labeled +” (Networks, Crowds, and Markets, Easley and Kleinberg). This is overall a great marketing strategy for Patagonia (even if it’s unintentional) to increase their revenue whilst combating climate change and staying true to their company values. The recent news about Patagonia’s stride into bettering the environment creates a stable network and in turn benefits everyone involved in the network.
Let’s begin with the scenario with Patagonia (P), consumers (C), and the environment (E). In the following trio we have a stable network. Consumers would naturally want to protect the environment, so they have a positive relationship with each other. Patagonia’s mission is to protect the environment, so they have a positive relationship with each other as well. There is no stress or negative news about Patagonia so this must be a stable relationship. In order to have a stable network, we need three positive edges so Patagonia and the consumers have a positive relationship.
Consumers would buy more of Patagonia’s product to help the company help the environment, causing a positive feedback loop where customers buy more of Patagonia’s products, Patagonia donates more money to the environment, the environment is improving, causing customers to become happy with Patagonia’s efforts and buys more clothes to support them.
We can also look at this in another way. Let’s have Patagonia (P), consumers (C), and a rival company (R). Assuming this is a stable network, we again have consumers and Patagonia in an alliance for their attitudes towards protecting the environment. Patagonia would naturally see another clothing company as a rival, so that is denoted by a negative symbol. Customers may now see other companies in a negative light for taking no action towards climate change and may even boycott certain brands for actually being unsustainable, such as Shein.
No matter the situation, customers and Patagonia have a positive relationship and while this may be unintentional Patagonia is earning customers’ trust and fulfilling their mission. While consumerism won’t be eradicated, consumers can know happily that their money will be used towards making the world a better place.