Abstract
Growing environmental awareness in recent years has led to an increase in demand for environmentally friendly management by companies, and convenience stores are no exception. Waste generated by convenience stores, for example, is becoming a target for criticism. For this reason, convenience stores have begun making environmentally friendly efforts in order to rectify this situation. This is because customers have begun to show increasing support for companies that are tackling environmental issues.This paper examines convenience at convenience stores structurally causes wastefulness, and it considers and analyzes the process of these structural problems through thorough participant observation.
As a result of participant observation conducted at a convenience store in Kyoto, Japan, it was found that two relationships underlie wastefulness at convenience stores. These are: 1) the relationship between the franchisee and customers, and 2) the relationship between the franchisee and the franchiser. These relationships include the situations as follows: 1) the franchisee seeks to meet convenience-oriented customers' needs; 2) the franchiser supposedly exhibits environmental concern by recommending that its franchisees conduct environmentally-oriented activities but actually pursues more profits, while the franchisee causes wastefulness because of trepidation about opportunity loss.
