PROSIT - Sustainability Information: Supporting Communication Between Customers and Product Developers

The communication of sustainability values shared between product developers and customers is an important catalyst for effective collaborations that inspire sustainable consumption and help achieve sustainability goals.

Objectives

This research aims to support the provision of product sustainability information to consumers by addressing five objectives:

1. Examine existing tools that communicate product sustainability information to their customers;
2. Investigating customers' perception and preference for product sustainability information;
3. How to model customer preference for sustainability information using data analytics;
4. Explore the possibilities of using digital solutions for sustainability communication between companies and customers;
5. Propose a systematic approach to bridge the sustainability communication gap between customers and product developers.

Implementation

The research will involve

i) an in-depth case study of the two companies;

ii) user studies and co-created experiments (e.g. "product box", "buy-a-feature" exercise) to create an understanding of how customers prioritize product sustainability features (Backcasting); and

(iii) data analysis to create quantitative predictive models to understand how new technologies can improve sustainability communication between companies and their customers