Positioning Statement V2
My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions. The framework provides product awareness and choice to facilitate decisions that are beneficial for health, environment, and social welfare. It attempts to modernize purchasing decisions by educating shoppers with critical product information. It also encourages manufacturers to be transparent with their products on multiple levels.
Positioning Statement V3
My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions. The framework provides product awareness and choice, allowing citizens to think about their products in terms of three crucial elements: personal health, environmental stewardship, and social welfare. These three elements allow citizens to view products holistically, like a stool with three legs. A stool needs all three legs in order to be stable. If a product is missing any one or more its legs, it is doing harm to citizen, environment, or worker. The framework attempts to modernize the system that people use to make their purchasing decisions.
It also encourages manufacturers to think about product design holistically using the three elements mentioned above. It provides specific goals for manufacturers to achieve in order to improve the footprint of any particular product. It holds manufacturers accountable and encourages them to be transparent with their products on multiple levels.
Positioning Statement V4
My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions at a time that is increasingly being defined as an era of sustainability. Green is now mainstream and viewed as good for business by many progressive companies. Sustainability is changing our consumption landscape, but the status quo of take-make-waste will not be dethroned unless we take affirmative action.
My project helps citizens navigate products, in this emerging era, and make value based decisions in terms of three basic elements: protecting personal health, environmental stewardship, and social welfare. It provides product awareness and choice, challenging citizens to view their products in a broader, holistic context. It reframes the traditional purchasing decision mindset, based purely on price and performance, to include a value based angle. Products with high value will be elevated to a status of high authenticity. Authenticity is increasingly becoming a quality as coveted as price and performance. My project attempts to modernize the system that people use to make their purchasing decisions to facilitate actions that follow the spirit of the sustainable era.
It also encourages manufacturers to think about product design holistically using the three elements mentioned above. It ties in directly with the idea of value branding and corporate responsibility. It provides specific goals for manufacturers to achieve in order to improve the footprint of any particular product. It holds manufacturers accountable and encourages them to be transparent with their products on multiple levels. Many companies are already embracing transparency since it is directly link to how citizens view a company’s/products authenticity level. Companies call this corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Removed the stool metaphor – replaced with the authenticity concept
These three elements allow citizens to view products holistically, like a stool with three legs. A stool needs all three legs in order to be stable. If a product is missing any one or more its legs, it is doing harm to citizen, environment, or worker.
Positioning Statement V5
Make citizens product smart. :)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Research: Target Audience (cont'd)
De-Motivators
Winning Combo
Easy Accepted Tangibles - spring boards
Basic Purchasing Decisions
Product Lifecycle (from a consumer's perspective)
Reseach: Target Audience
Typical Good Earth Citizen
- does the small things already
- uses cfls, canvas grocery bags
- bikes/car pools/transit/walks
- purchases energy efficient and recyclable products
- would like to educate kids with how to live with our environment
What does being Green Mean to a Citizen?
- no right answer, it varies, nobody sees green the same way
- how do they make choices wrt to sustainability, recycling, product lifecycle?
- environmental issues usually not a standalone factor for purchasing a product, like brand and price, but they can act as tipping points
- choice is key
- decisions are based on the rational and emotional
- opportunity lies in appealing to the rational side of citizens
- people are inundated with green messages, some of it green washing
- complicated to navigate messaging and make good decisions that fit our lives
Continuum ColorBlind Study
- Wonderful study conducted by a progressive design firm here
- Ethnographic interviews attempt to glean insight into behavioral and purchasing decisions in relation to "green" and "sustainable"
- interviewed over 7000 people online and in person
- 18-60 yrs old
- income 50k to 104k, USA
Key Findings from ColorBlind Study by Continuum
1. people care more about their immediate world, people in their lives, family and friends
2. they make choices to protect and sustain them
3. good companies will link green offerings with personal benefits
4. environment is abstract to many (forest, beach), not seen as the everyday
5. tangible actions, ones where consumers can see and control the results are embraced (ie. recycling, energy, water conservation)
6. environmental choices feel good, people want to make the right choice.
7. ideals are not always consistent with action at home
8. being green and buying green don't necessarily go hand in hand - lower income earners usually have a small footprint just because they consume less
9. it's not a black and white issue, multidimensional - need to speak in a variety of relevant ways
10. messaging more effective when practical (rational) more so than aspirational
11. consumers abhor waste, they value conservation not so much because its green but because it's frugal
Motivations (or lack of)
1. inconvenience
2. cost
3. confusion
=> Companies that develop green messaging that reduces these factors will benefit.
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