The impact of Sustainability on consumer products

The consumer products industry needs to change - It must be based on new business models that support sharing, reuse, resell and recycle approaches...

Modern value chains need to create value for all beings and consumer products need to be designed with purpose in mind to create sustainable value for a Circular Economy

The consumer products landscape must undergo a radical change. The time of endless growth in revenue and market share without harming the wellbeing of people and the planet is over. Responsible companies must transform from revenue-driven to sustainable-driven wellbeing companies in order to find their place in a circular economy. The new customer groups are more sensitive to their purpose, the planet and the sharing economy. They want to decide what, where and how they buy and use their products. This imposes challenges on the whole value chains of companies - they need to become more flexible, more resilient, more connected and more focused on an economy that creates value for all beings and that really serves humanity. So the consumer industry needs to change. It needs to adopt new technology (e.g. Data Intelligence to track products along their specific product lifecycle) in order to be able to react on new customer demands and market opportunities (e.g. products-as-a-service or new sharing platforms, take back models, etc.). Sustainable digital transformation will help to enable new circular business models and smart technology will help to deliver personalized products and services, not for consumers but for users of products and services. Technology enables the creation of value networks to make sure all participants can benefit equally. So a circular economy must find ways to adopt technology in order to:

🌎 Find new ways to simplify and standardize materials, components and packaging to be used for products

🌎 Optimize product usage based on data from measuring items (e.g. IoT trackers) in products

🌎 Convert consumers to users and give them new ways to interact with products and services

I believe it is a time to revolutionize the way we do business. It is time for a Purpose-driven Wellbeing Economy. But to achieve this goal companies need to rethink how they design, market and sell products for a circular economy, and how we track products along their product lifecycle to measure their impact. Consumers have to step into the shoes of product users who care about dematerialization of the product and how it can serve other users in a circular economy. What do you think?