In the following article I want to focus especially on the area of ecological sustainability and sustainability is used synonymously for economic sustainability.

Sustainability has received a lot of attention in recent years and the role of sustainability in business and design is a heavily discussed topic. While I certainly agree that it is the right thing to follow principles that ensure economic, social and ecological sustainability, I am less convinced about the value “sustainable products” offer to customers.

But if sustainability doesn’t offer value, why is there a need for electronic cars? And why do consumers pay organizations to offset their carbon footprint? I think this has nothing to do with the value that “sustainability” offers but is instead motivated by other reasons. I would like to discuss a few observations that I have made and the consequences these observations have for marketers.

In search of substitutes

The recent interest in electric cars is not driven by an increased demand for sustainable, electric cars but actually because of souring prices for oil. Consumers are looking for cars that use something else than oil and found it in hybrid and electric cars.

The same holds true for other products where paper packaging is used instead of plastic packaging as well as the so called cradle-to-cradle design, where you focus on designing your products with the whole product lifecycle (including  recycling) in mind.

All these decisions are driven by consumers (and designers) who are looking for substitutes to reduce the high costs of current solutions.

Your peace of mind

Another driver for an increased demand for sustainable products is guilt. It has become en vogue to look down on people who drive a SUV and to feel guilty whenever you do something that is not environmentally friendly. This has gone so far that people have started not only to calculate their carbon footprint, but also pay someone to offset their carbon footprint through investments in economically friendly initiatives.

Whenever I book a flight on a German travel site it induces guilt by telling me how much carbon dioxide I will create with this flight. Luckily I have an option to pay someone to make up for my environmentally unfriendliness which so far I have chosen not to use due to my personal concerns about this “donation schemes”. These donation systems are already the reason for official warnings from the U.S. government about scams to offset your carbon footprint but this is whole different story.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with using guilt to stimulate a certain consumer behavior and make people buy your products. Yet at the end of the day, it is guilt and the corresponding need for having “peace of mind” that is driving the decision of consumers and not the intrinsic need for a “sustainable product”.

Sustainability becomes a hygienic factor, but not a differentiating factor

If sustainability does not provide any (functional) value to consumers itself, one might ask why more and more companies are changing their marketing message to incorporate aspects of sustainability? There are certain interest groups that use the current environment to push their interest and their messages and they pick rather popular targets. Apple has created a special section on its homepage about the ecological aspects of its products as a result of a public criticism from Greenpeace in 2006 about toxic materials in its products.

This is also the reason that it becomes a necessity for companies in the current zeitgeist to ensure and communicate all aspects of their sustainability initiatives in order to prevent to become a publicly criticized for unsustainable practices. But just when every product and company is “sustainable”, sustainability itself becomes a commodity, a hygienic factor and is not a differentiating factor anymore.

The role of sustainability to create customer value

With sustainability not being a differentiator itself and due to the lack of customer value that is created through sustainability, one might ask what the role of sustainability can be in product and service design? From a theoretical perspective the task is to turn the value of sustainability from a symbolic, emotional value created by ecological aspects into functional value of the core product. IDEO’s Diego Rodriguez calls it “turning green into red”, designing green cars so they full of passion and delight.

I have written about the Tesla Roadster, a fully electric car that is a great example about this. Tesla has continued this “process of turning green into red” with their latest car, the Tesla S Sedan, which has received praise all over the media for it’s revolutionary design that doesn’t reflect that the car is an electric car. Here is one picture, you can find more pictures online.

 

The implications for your business?

So is design for sustainability the wrong approach? Not, it isn’t and designers and engineers should indeed focus on it. But one has to remember that the value proposition to the customer is essential and business should not focus on product characteristics that leave the customer’s needs and motivation out of the equation. A “sustainable product” alone doesn’t solve a customer problem, except that it make him feel less guilty and could help him save costs.

If businesses are serious about designing sustainable products, they need to translate sustainability into features that offer customer value and are not just providing peace of mind. And if you are designing a substitute product, then position it as substitute product and help consumer safe money.

The goal should be to design a product that sells not because consumers want a sustainable product, but because consumers want the product and don’t care that it is sustainable. Only then we have achieved a true change towards an ecologically sustainable society.

Images courtesy of [xotoko], [vgm8383] and Jalopnik