SPECIAL FEATURE ON INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY AS A SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE - Exploring Green Consumers’ Mind-Set toward Green Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment - The Case of Skeptical Brazilian and Portuguese Green Consumers

Aug 31, 2026

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Businesses increasingly explore industrial ecology (IE) to support market-oriented sustainability, yet limited research explains how green consumers evaluate production when it is connected to green product design and life cycle assessment (LCA). This article analyzes green consumers’ mind-set using 18 in-depth interviews with skeptical participants from Brazil and Portugal. A simplified framework links IE and marketing to market-oriented sustainability, identifying gaps between consumer demands and business supply, and highlighting skepticism toward greenwashing as a barrier.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Summary

Introduction

Market-oriented sustainability and industrial ecology interplay

Research aim and questions

Theoretical background

Multidisciplinary rationale between IE and market-oriented sustainability

SPECIAL FEATURE ON INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY AS A SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Exploring Green Consumers’ Mind-Set toward Green Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment The Case of Skeptical Brazilian and Portuguese Green Consumers Fred Lemke and Joo Pedro Pereira Luzio Keywords: consumer skepticism green consumers green production greenwashing industrial ecology market-oriented sustainability Summary Businesses are increasingly interested in exploring the key concepts of industrial ecology (IE), particularly within the context of market-oriented sustainability. However, few studies have researched how green consumers perceive production as having relevant product design and life cycle assessment (LCA) dimensions. In this article, we explore green consumers’mind-set toward such system tools of IE by conducting 18 in-depth interviews with Brazilian and Portuguese green consumers. We propose a simpliﬁed theoretical framework for achieving market-oriented sustainability based on the multidisciplinary potential between IE and marketing. Our analysis suggests that there are still important gaps between what green consumers demand and what businesses are currently able (or willing) to supply. Our ﬁndings support the idea that businesses interested in following IE within the context of marketoriented sustainability should spend greater effort in understanding the green consumer’s production-related mind-set. In particular, we propose (1) avoiding consumer skepticism and dissatisfaction with greenwashing and (2) establishing credibility and information transparency. Both seem to act as preconditions to better align the product design and LCA processes with green consumer needs within the emerging paradigm of market-oriented sustainability. Introduction Societal and environmental concerns are not new, either in industrial ecology (IE) (see Desrochers [2000] for an assessment) or in marketing (Fisk 1973; Kotler and Levy 1969; Takas 1974) . Notwithstanding, this trend seems of greater relevance today given that most leading manufacturers are now (1) competing in the marketplace by using sustainability as strategy (Hart 1995, 1997; Menon and Menon 1997; Porter and Kramer 2011; Nidumolu et al. 2009; Esty and Porter 1998) and (2) increasingly demonstrating interest in adopting key concepts of IE to help implement the emerging market-oriented sustainability paradigm (cf. O’Rourke 2005; Crittenden et al. 2011) . Hence, the more pertinent question at the moment seems to be how to implement sustainability in a market context. As stated by Sheth and colleagues (2011, 22),“given that the business signiﬁcance of sustainability has wide acceptance, the critical issue now is the nature of business response.” In this regard, there is substantial interdisciplinary potential between market-oriented sustainability and IE, particularly atthe product level. Generally speaking, consumers do not have a natural desire—or need—for environmentally or socially Address correspondence to: Professor Fred Lemke, Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Com(Hons.), Chair in Marketing and Sustainability, Newcastle University Business School, Services Marketing Research Group/MOS Group 5, Barrack Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SE, United Kingdom. Email: [fred.lemke@newcastle.ac.uk](fred.lemke@newcastle.ac.uk), Web: [www.ncl.ac.uk/](www.ncl.ac.uk/)[ ](www.ncl.ac.uk/)[nubs/staff/pro](nubs/staff/pro)ﬁ[le/fred.lemke](le/fred.lemke) © 2014 by Yale University DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12123 Editor managing review: Peter Wells Volume 18, Number 5 [www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/j](www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/j)ie Journal of Industrial Ecology 619 RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS unsustainable products (Ottman 2011) . Unfortunately, though we can observe that an increasing number of businesses incorporate the notion of sustainability in production, it is striking that an important stakeholder such as the green consumer is consistently downplayed by businesses with regar

FAQs

What gap does the study address about green consumers and industrial ecology?

It examines how green consumers perceive production-related dimensions of green product design and life cycle assessment (LCA), an area that few studies have explored in market-oriented sustainability contexts.

How was the research conducted?

The study uses 18 in-depth interviews with skeptical green consumers from Brazil and Portugal to assess their mind-set toward IE system tools.

What key preconditions does the study identify for aligning product design and LCA with consumer needs?

Avoiding consumer skepticism and dissatisfaction with greenwashing, and establishing credibility and information transparency.

Aug 31, 2026

Upload by Finn