No matter how Sustainable Product Service Innovations (SPSI) are designed, their actual environmental gain depends on the acceptance by the intended users. Sustainable systems must therefore deliver an added value to these users. Although this is nothing new compared to sustainable products, for SPSI this issue is much more difficult to capture in the design process, because of the higher complexity of product-service systems compared to single products.

How can we investigate and analyse the consumers' needs, wants and acceptance in the development of Sustainable Product/Service Innovations to enhance acceptance? For product development, various methods for consumer research have been developed, for different phases of the development process [Schoormans & De Bont (1995)]. From our four year experience in developing sustainable product service systems, we learned that these existing methods are not always appropriate. Especially the early stages of the development process seem to require special approaches. The system concepts that are to be tested are often new and abstract. They consist of a combination of products and services, which is also new in the perception of the consumer. And it turns out that it remains difficult to 'catch' the proper customer added value that a new concept must deliver in order to get accepted.

The paper will present and discuss various methods we use for consumer research in designing sustainable product service systems. The current "Mitka-project" will serve as an example. The Mitka is being developed as a sustainable solution for home-work transportation. It is combination of a human powered / electrical vehicle and services. These services vary from a repair service, to storing possibilities, financial support, etc. The aim is to diminish the amount of car kilometres. The project focuses on employees of Nike, who will be the first users of this Mitka system. The paper will discuss and evaluate the consumers' research approach that has been followed in this project and the results so far.

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Last updated: 13 November, 2008