Oceans clogged with plastics, toxic e-waste illegally disposed of in developing countries, or clothes sewed under inhumane working conditions – evidence that current consumption practices pose a serious threat to the economic, social, and environmental well-being of the planet is abundant (Schrader & Thøgersen 2011, p. 3; Rost 2015, p. 299 f.). In general, overconsumption along with the international division of labor is responsible for many aberrations in this respect. Consumer electronics are a prime example; particularly, cheap products produced in low-wage countries under poor working conditions, which are then shipped to western countries with a continuously decreasing lifespan use while often releasing harmful substances, and are finally exported back to developing countries for disposal. A snapshot of the recent coverage on the consequences of current consumption practices from leading newspapers is compiled in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Headlines Covering the Consequences of Current Consumption Practices1
Subsumed under the goal of “improving sustainability”, addressing such aberrations has been identified by academia, governments, and NGO2 as one of the key challenges of the present and the future (Prothero et al. 2011, p. 32 f.; Pettersen 2015a, p. 252 f.). This challenge can be met through (1) a significant change in current consumer behavior (Pettersen & Boks 2008, p. 287; Strömberg et al. 2015, p. 163) and (2) products that are clearly more sustainable than most of today’s products (Boks & McAloone 2009, p. 442 f.;
1 Sources of newspaper headlines are provided in Appendix I.
2 NGO = nongovernmental organization.
The Guardian, 01/28/16
E-Commerce: Convenience Built on a Mountain of Cardboard
Food Waste Is Becoming Serious Economic and Environmental Issue, Report Says
The best thing a business could do for the environment is shut down
Your coffee pod machine is killing the environment
The staggering economic cost of air pollution
Making a living in the toxic world of discarded electronics
Dangelico et al. 2013, p. 643). Thus, the primary factors of the sustainable consumption equation are demand and supply – the population that buys everyday products and the companies that develop, produce, and sell them (Luchs & Miller 2015, p. 254).
On the demand side, consumer surveys report a willingness to change consumption behavior (i.e. buying less or at least buying more consciously). However, such studies potentially suffer from severe social desirability bias: participants provide answers they feel obligated to give on the survey because it comes at no extra cost – often different from the real-life purchasing decision. Thus, consumers’ claims may not translate into actual behavioral changes (Luchs et al. 2010, p. 29). As a result, a plethora of studies finds that consumers value product sustainability more and more (Otto Group 2013, p. 38 f.; Nielsen 2015, pp. 8–10; Consumer Council 2016, p. 20 f.). In reality, this is only reflected in consumers’ purchasing decisions to a minor extent (Esty & Simmons 2011, p. 269; Luchs et al. 2012, p. 903). Thus, more research is called for to understand and influence individuals about consuming in a more sustainable way (Phipps et al. 2013, p. 1232; Luchs
& Miller 2015, p. 265).
On the supply side, many of the negative externalities of a product’s manufacture and use (e.g. pollution or energy consumption) are already designed into the product itself (Hopkins 2010, p. 76). Hence, companies need to tackle sustainability in the product development stage, at which all substantial features and properties of a product are defined (Ponn &
Lindemann 2011, p. 273). Thus, product development to a great extent predetermines a product’s sustainability performance for its entire life-cycle (Woll et al. 2011, p. 851).
However, while “unsustainable” products readily come to mind (e.g. leaf blowers or deck flooring from tropical woods), it is challenging to think of a product that – if industrially mass produced, used, and disposed – truly has no, or at least only marginal, negative impact on anything and anybody (Diegel et al. 2010, p. 69; Petersen 2015, p. 92). Generally speaking, it remains elusive what exactly constitutes a more sustainable product (Brockhaus et al.
2016a, p. 128 f.). Definitions available in the literature necessarily have to remain on a quite abstract level. One widely used definition understands more sustainable products as “all kinds of products that have or aim at an improved environmental and social quality (…). The ultimate aim is to satisfy customers and gain a competitive advantage in the market”
(Seuring & Müller 2008, p. 1705). Since sustainability is generally understood as being a relative concept, numerous contradictory possibilities to incrementally improve product sustainability emerge. Today, developing more sustainable products is on the agenda of many companies even though a clear vision of their properties is missing.
Research Objective and Research Questions 3
1.1 Research Objective and Research Questions
Adding sustainability to a product’s requirement list complicates an already complex process. Besides the paramount technical challenges, it also adds contextual factors to be considered (Alblas et al. 2014, p. 519): for example, managing stakeholders and supply chain relationships (Goffin 2012, p. 111). Research on product development traditionally focuses on developing solutions for such challenges in the form of methods and tools (Ponn 2016, p. 413). This also holds true for sustainable product development (Klöpffer 2003, p. 157). However, this approach may not meet the true needs of companies since research often has too little insight into the real challenges of the industry (Ponn 2016, p. 411).
Specifically, while practitioners are concerned with the details of developing products in the light of severe project constraints, researchers are often focusing on generic frameworks and universally applicable methods. They concentrate on the bigger picture and pay little attention to the constraints of individual projects (Ponn 2016, p. 413). A gap between theory and practice emerges. As a result, most of the sustainability-related methods proposed in the literature do not make it into the product development process of any company (Baumann et al. 2002, p. 418 f.; Hallstedt 2008, p. 35 f.; May et al. 2012, p. 444).
Even though an extensive body of literature on sustainable product development exists (this will be substantiated in Chapter 3), little is known about the practical implications of the rather fuzzy notion of sustainability on established development processes (Woll et al. 2011, p. 850). To date, only limited empirically-grounded research analyzes the specific ways companies use for meeting the challenge of developing more sustainable products.
Nevertheless, especially before the looming danger of sustainability being degraded to a hollow marketing phrase, moving beyond the hype is deemed promising (Diegel et al. 2010, p. 68). Product development appears to be a suitable starting point since sustainability requirements for products are often fuzzy (Alblas et al. 2014, p. 518) and must be translated into a heap of objective, measurable, and reproducible product properties. Thus, the research objective of the current dissertation is stated as follows:
Research Objective: Gaining a better understanding of how product sustainability is accounted for in product development and contributing to the further adoption of sustainability principles through identifying best practice examples.
The research objective is directly derived from the phenomenon of growing sustainability awareness, as described previously. Thus, it is a both timely and relevant topic. Three research questions are put forward concerning the research objective; Figure 2 provides an overview.
Figure 2: Phenomenon, Research Objective, Research Questions, and Methods
The first research question is concerned with identifying, comparing, and describing different strategies companies employ to include the notion of sustainability in their product development processes. It reads as follows:
Research Question 1: Which approaches are taken by companies for the development of more sustainable products?
As has been established, considering sustainability in product development drives complexity and warrants additional academic attention. However, to conduct meaningful (especially conceptual) research, a sufficient knowledge of the actual challenges product developers face in their daily work is necessary. As extant research is frequently criticized for a lack thereof, the second research question is stated as follows:
Research Question 2: Which challenges do product developers have to meet in the context of developing more sustainable products?
For addressing the first two research questions, an explorative, qualitative study utilizing a Grounded Theory approach is taken. Its goal is to generate meaningful insights into companies’ approaches and challenges. Through comparing best practices across cases, it is also designed to help derive recommendations for practice. However, as it is typically not possible to generalize findings from qualitative studies beyond the sample, some findings will also be backed up quantitatively. Thus, the third research question concerned with recommendations for practice is also addressed by means of a quantitative study building on behavioral experiments. It reads as follows:
Research Question 3: Which recommendations can be derived for the
developers have to meet in the context of developing more
Research Structure 5
1.2 Research Structure
To address the underlying research questions, the current manuscript builds on two empirical analyses that are embedded in seven consecutive chapters (see Figure 3). In the following Chapter 2, this dissertation’s reference framework is established through introducing and delimiting the associated terminology of product development, the concept of sustainability, and consumer goods. Chapter 3 maps the existing state of research on managing sustainability in product development using an extensive literature review.
Relevant streams and findings in the literature are highlighted, and the research questions of this dissertation are substantiated. Chapter 4 introduces this dissertation’s research design that consists of a two-stage, mixed-methods approach. The method choices for the qualitative and the quantitative research phase are accounted for, and the fundamental assumptions and procedural requirements of Grounded Theory studies and behavioral experiments are proposed and related to each other.
Figure 3: Structure of this Manuscript
7. Conclusion and Outlook
5. Empirical Study I: Qualitative Analysis 6. Empirical Study II: Quantitative Analysis 4. Methodology