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Fachbereichsarbeit
Umweltwissenschaften

Technische Universität Wien - TU

2009

Marco O. ©
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ID# 1417







Market perception study on EIPs (Eco-Innovative Products) from the Customer point of view

General consumer opinion

Searching through the Internet to gather information about “eco-innovative products” leads to many hits. There are lots of information about appropriate legislation under discussion, definitions and different approaches to enforce these sorts of products on the market.

It seems like that there is a proven social benefit in implementing eco-innovative products. On the other hand, there are recently only view comments, discussions and opinions from consumers on this topic.

To get an idea why the current situation is like that, we can take a look about the information sources of consumers in the case they want to inform themselves about such category of products. An international survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates [1] discovered, that television and the Internet are the primary sources of information for today’s consumers.

By asking people on Facebook and some pertinent consumer panels [2], what they think about “eco-innovative products”, it turns out, that there are different kinds of consumers. The majority of the consumers think, that the term eco-innovative products are linked to the topic of “environmental care”, “environmental change”, “limited resources” and “modern technology”, which convert energy out of renewable energy sources, like wind turbines and solar panels.

The answered terms to the question what they associate with eco-innovative products, were i.e. “home wind turbines”, “ecological benefits”, “ecologically produced” and “more expensive”. It also turns out, that there is a mistrust that the term “eco-“ could be a marketing gag of companies to apply to the consumers’ conscience, to be responsible and do their part to take care about the environment by buying those products.

To conclude the findings, the majority of consumers focus on the term “eco”, rather than on innovation and for this reason there is often a mix up about “eco-innovative” and “green” products.

Advertising of eco-innovative products

If we take a look on leading innovative companies advertising, we can observe that these companies already have adjusted themselves to this development. In order to satisfy the consumer needs best, they focus their messages on the term “innovation”, and present the green character as a logic step to future development and an additional benefit for the consumer.

To have an example we are focus on products, which are considered to be “eco-innovative”, i.e. the Toyota Prius. If we take a look about the terms are used in it’s advertising, we never find the adjective “eco-innovative”.

What we see are pictures of nature, green areas and happy people dressed as flowers around the car. Slogans like “Harmony between man, nature and machine” only emphasize the underlying message they want to send [3]. If we analyze the oral message, or the facts which are presented on the homepage, we can see that there is a clear focus on costumer needs, like “amazing design”, “noiseless driving”, or “less fuel consumption”, “efficiency”, “dynamic performance”.

In the case of products, where the main consumer benefits correlates with environmentally friendly innovations, they are considered to be eco-innovative at all, and are communicated as such. For example, server systems are worthier, in the consumer point of view, if they save more power, need less cooling energy and can be build smaller [5].

What products are being discussed?

By observing blogs or panels what products people do consider to be eco-innovative, you find a broad range of products. A view examples named are a “software” to share space online [6], a “play pump water system” [7], the “Apple Macbook Air” [8], the Amazon Kindle [9], or break through innovations like “a Flapping Solar Aircraft” (A Bird Plain) [10], or “a small wind turbine” to be installed on house roofs [11].

Eco-innovative products are advertised with terms like “sustainable innovation” or “future technology” to avoid that consumer think of an advertising strategy to capitalize their concern to fight against environmental problems. Therefore the term “eco-innovation” is not very commonly used.


[1] Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, 2009, "2009 Green Brands survey"

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