Engaging Young Consumers in Co-designing Sustainable Products

The roadmap towards a more sustainable production and consumption model calls for the active role of consumers. To engage consumers as active participants in the sustainable transition, companies are called upon to support them in making sustainable purchasing decisions. To this end, companies must provide customers with full access to reliable information on the sustainability value of their offerings and this research addresses how companies can empower consumers to play an active role in driving the transition to a more sustainable consumption behavior. We empirically examined a sample of product co-design toolkits adopted by companies operating globally aiming at exploring to what extent the examined toolkits can support young consumers in receiving reliable information on the sustainability value of the products they are co-designing. The findings of this study provide companies with managerial insights about features that could be implemented in product co-design toolkits to empower consumers’ awareness of the sustainability impact of their purchasing and consumption behaviors.