“Should marketers be focusing on motivating consumers to make green choices? Or should companies instead focus on making their mainstream products and services green?”
David Schatsky, principal at Green Research, posed these questions to his readers in a recent blog post, “Where is the Green Gap?” in response to some research presented by Ogilvy & Mather, “Mainstream Green: Moving Sustainability from Niche to Normal.” Schatsky makes an important observation. Is it the consumer attitude that needs to change - or the product itself?
At the end of the day, while we hear a great deal about consumers needing to change their behaviors to achieve a greener outcome – that consumers must be educated so that they will make wiser, more sustainable choices, or that a significant portion of the environmental impact of a product often takes place during the “use phase” of the product lifecyle – the fact remains that, ultimately, consumers are not the ones responsible for the sustainability of a product. Manufacturers are.
Just as they are responsible for making mainstream products that are safe, affordable, high-quality, and/or easy-to-use, manufacturers are responsible for delivering sustainable products to this market segment, if the goal is to drive sales of sustainable products among mainstream buyers. It is simply unreasonable to expect that mainstream consumers are going to change their buying behavior, and begin buying “greener products” unless the alternative “greener” product offerings are competitively priced, and performance is comparable.
At the end of the day, while we hear a great deal about consumers needing to change their behaviors to achieve a greener outcome – that consumers must be educated so that they will make wiser, more sustainable choices, or that a significant portion of the environmental impact of a product often takes place during the “use phase” of the product lifecyle – the fact remains that, ultimately, consumers are not the ones responsible for the sustainability of a product. Manufacturers are.
Just as they are responsible for making mainstream products that are safe, affordable, high-quality, and/or easy-to-use, manufacturers are responsible for delivering sustainable products to this market segment, if the goal is to drive sales of sustainable products among mainstream buyers. It is simply unreasonable to expect that mainstream consumers are going to change their buying behavior, and begin buying “greener products” unless the alternative “greener” product offerings are competitively priced, and performance is comparable.
That said, the question I would pose to manufacturers is, if the goal is to drive adoption of greener products among mainstream consumers –isn’t it essential that they focus their efforts on actually making their mainstream products and services “greener?”
Clearly, it’s a challenge for manufacturers to rethink how their products should be designed and manufactured in order to achieve product-level sustainability goals for mainstream customers – but unless this path is chosen, there is little hope that adoption of “greener” products will ever truly go mainstream.
The good news is that the tools to assist product manufacturers and designers to more easily conceive of and to produce greener products, are becoming more widely accessible, and training to support the use of such tools, is on the rise. Companies like Autodesk, SolidWorks, PTC and Sustainable Minds – are all on a mission to make sustainable product design more accessible to the masses. Which, hopefully, means that – in the coming decade, we will begin to see more of just what Schatsky is asking for: companies that are focused on making their mainstream products and services greener as a matter of course, and doing so without sacrificing either product performance or affordability.
It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”
So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.
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