Case study: Consumer research for the EcoTopTen campaign

In the context of the EcoTopTen initiative to promote ecological products, focus groups were conducted on several product groups (prefabricated houses, cars, computers, monitors, televisions, textiles, bicycles, electricity from renewable sources etc.). A cross-evaluation showed that “today’s“ consumers have quite different attitudes than those of consumers in the 1980s and 1990s:

• Good design instead of alternative symbols;
• Emphasis on the individual instead of the group
• Fun instead of suffering
• Experience instead of disaster
• Gain and success instead of “anti-” attitude
• Professional instead of home-made
• Fast rather than slow

In relation to ecological products there are clear (pre-)judgements that result predominantly from the weaknesses (long since corrected) of ecological products in the 1980s. Despite the existence of plenty of information, it costs even interested consumers a great deal of effort and time to gather sufficient comparative information for products which are good in every respect (that is, information about quality, price, life-cycle costs, environmental aspects, social sustainability in production or optimal use behaviour). The situation is made worse by ever shorter product cycles and the large number of new products and developments.

There were a great many surprises in the consumer research on individual products:

• committed environmentalists do not want a small car,
• cheap meat gets cooked on very expensive designer cookers,
• thirst for adventure, but fear of changing electricity supplier,
• people want high tech cars, ABS and side-impact airbag, but will tolerate awful brakes and poor lighting on bikes,
• prices/costs play a comparatively minimal role with some products,
  e.g. cars, TV sets, cookers;
• the concept of life-cycle costs is largely not understood and/or not accepted.