Current consumption practices are a serious threat to the economic, environmental, and social well-being of the planet. One solution to tackle issues caused by global consumption practices is to develop products that are more sustainable. Companies have high traction in this respect since product development to a great extent predetermines a product’s sustainability performance over its entire life-cycle. However, due to its multi-dimensional nature, it is not easy to define what constitutes a more sustainable product. Also, little is known about the practical implications of the rather fuzzy notion of sustainability on established development processes in industry. Nevertheless, companies more and more often strive to consider sustainability aspects for their products.
In the light of the above, the current dissertation’s objective was to gain a better understanding of how product sustainability is accounted for in product development and to contribute to the further adoption of sustainability principles through identifying best practice examples. Three research questions were put forward and tackled through a mixed-methods research design. First, an inductive, qualitative study was performed through conducting and analyzing 32 interviews with product development managers from the consumer goods industry. These interviews, along with secondary data, provided a rich context for highlighting prevalent development practices and producing a number of research propositions. Some acted as impetus for a subsequent deductive, quantitative study that looked into consumers’ responses to prevalent development practices through a series of behavioral experiments.
Research Question 1: Which approaches are taken by companies for the development of more sustainable products?
The first research question is addressed through the findings and implications of the qualitative study. Two interrelated aspects are found to determine the way companies deal with developing more sustainable products. First, six types of approaches towards sustainability on a corporate level were identified, ranging from Minimalists (i.e. companies only marginally considering sustainability) all the way to True Believers (i.e. companies founded with the premise of sustainability in mind). Second, on the product development level, three variables for conceptualizing sustainability are identified: the range of products considered for sustainability initiatives, the way these sustainability initiatives are communicated through the exterior design of the product, and the initiative’s level of innovativeness. This conceptualization on the product development level reflects the corporate approach. For example, Test Balloonists (e.g. companies starting to engage with sustainability in a specific area) tend to set up separate lines of more sustainable products
holding only incremental improvements but communicating this approach through a stereotyped “green” exterior design. True Believers, on the other hand, consider sustainability for all products, often through challenging established product concepts. Also, they do not attempt to signal sustainability using design stereotypes.
Research Question 2: Which challenges do product developers have to meet in the context of developing more sustainable products?
The second research question is also addressed through the findings and implications of the qualitative study. Product developers face a number of challenges throughout the development process. First of all, the handling of sustainability issues is only seldom properly codified as opposed to, for example, quality requirements. Thus, developing more sustainable products is often subjected to uncertainties about sustainability requirements to be fulfilled and more importantly degrees of freedom that developers are allowed to use in the pursuit of higher sustainability. Second, integrating sustainability into products introduces trade-offs with classic development objectives like functionality, cost, and quality.
These trade-offs are hard to solve since third, product developers have difficulties assessing their sustainability-related decisions from a life-cycle perspective. Besides these challenges emerging during early development phases, developers from the sample also reported the severe obstacles they face when bringing the new products to market. For example, they sometimes have to overcome in-house skepticism since especially sales and marketing might fear that a line of more sustainable products could hurt the reputation of the rest of the product portfolio. Also, developers quarrel with ambiguous consumer behavior as consumers demonstrate limited interest in sustainability, despite studies suggesting an increased willingness to buy more sustainably. Finally, product developers are bothered by competitors’ activities that are close to greenwashing. Misleading claims or self-made labels devalue the meaning of sustainability and hamper a credible communication of actual sustainability efforts.
Research Question 3: Which recommendations can be derived for the development of more sustainable products?
The third research question is addressed through general recommendations derived from the qualitative study’s findings as well as some more specific findings from the quantitative study. For example, the qualitative study exposed that companies that are successfully bringing more sustainable products to the market codify clear and measurable objectives for their product developers. Thus, the product developers are offered guidance on how sustainability can be translated into technical parameters and on how far they are expected and allowed to push product sustainability. At the same time, these companies provide their
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product developers with resources for experimenting to find more sustainable solutions. As a result, new materials and designs are successfully tested as established product concepts are challenged. Also, these companies have realized that they need partners in their journey towards product sustainability. They know that it is necessary to consider the entire supply network of a product, and they closely collaborate with partners – even from different industries – to benefit from external resources.
The quantitative study yielded more specific recommendations on how companies should communicate sustainability improvements. It was found that a stereotyped “green” exterior design signals superior product sustainability to most consumers. However, this comes at a price for most products, as it might also signal lower quality and also appears less attractive to consumers from an aesthetics point of view. In general, the more important a product is to the consumer (i.e. intensive evaluation of available alternatives, the product can be used to emphasize personality, etc.) the less a “green” design is beneficial for forming a purchase intention. Thus, product developers should be aware of the consequences of their design choices. The use of more sustainable materials on the other hand – also a powerful signal for superior product quality – has much fewer unintended side effects compared to a “green” exterior design. In fact, for some products, even the aesthetic evaluation benefited from the reference to bioplastics or recycled materials.
Additionally to the managerial implications, several theoretical implications were derived from the findings of both studies. First of all, research on sustainable product development should be matched to the companies’ needs since it appears that until today, too much idle power is generated in this respect. Thus, researchers should focus their attention on meaningful conceptual and empirical research to help product developers get started with sustainability. Also, the role of human factors should further be illuminated as the developer’s personality and attitude can have a crucial influence on the outcome of a development project. Moreover, research activities should also include the market perspective as marketing and development tasks are often highly intertwined. Finally, multidisciplinary research (i.e. combining perspectives from diverse fields like social sciences, engineering, and life sciences) is called for to draw a conclusive picture of the sustainability challenge in product development. Taken together, it is concluded that the research questions of this dissertation have been answered sufficiently and, thus, helpful recommendations for theory and practice are provided.
At some point in the future, research on sustainable product development should have evolved to the point where sustainability is simply considered an integral part of products and therefore ceases to exist as an individual research stream through being absorbed by
product development research in general. However, until this is the case, theory and practice should further dedicate considerable resources to gain experiences and build knowledge on the sustainability aspects of product development. Even though the challenge of developing a truly more sustainable product seems paramount for many product developers in the industry, they should not be awestruck. Rather they should look for suitable partners and start the journey one step at a time. They should refrain from hasty reactions and take their time to experiment with new materials, process technologies, and product concepts. Even if this might not yet be the case today, at some point in time the question of whether companies want to engage in sustainability efforts will become rhetorical: they will have to engage.
Companies should make sure they are not caught empty-handed when serious sustainability efforts become standard practice and, thus, sustainable product development as a field of research will be antiquated. Charter & Clark (2008, p. 256) subsume this nicely by predicting that “never mind how big, successful and powerful a business is now, if it does not practice sustainable innovation, it will go the way of the dinosaurs.”