حالت های طراحی محصول برای صرفه جویی در انرژی: یک مطالعه موردی بر پوشاک مد

In participating in today's green movement, the development of sustainable products enables firms to drive changes to achieve business excellence and enhance corporate culture. The purpose of this paper is to develop guidelines for the design and production of sustainable energy-saving fashion products (ESFPs). A three-stage methodological approach was adopted: (1) a preliminary study using multiple sources of evidence to identify energy-saving factors for apparel products; (2) a questionnaire survey to investigate fashion consumers' behavioral attitudes toward ESFPs; and (3) an analytical study on the development of product design scenarios for sustainable fashion. Three categories of energy-saving factors were identified in the first study, four clusters of consumers were found in the second, while two scenarios were developed in the third. Practically, this study enables enterprises to obtain a deeper understanding of the green demands of their target customers and provides designers with a reference for the design and production of ESFPs to meet the specific needs of different customers. Theoretically, this study demonstrates a systematic and logistical procedure for the identification of energy factors for sustainable fashion and the development of feasible and practical scenarios for the design and production of ESFPs.

Sustainable development is generally regarded as the assurance of a balance among economic growth, social equity, and environmental protection (Levett, 1998). The harmful consequences of environmental problems in recent decades have caused many people to rethink their role in the protection of the natural environment. Indeed, the green movement is now thought to be a priority for many people and organizations (Solomon and Rabolt, 2009, Benedict and McMahon, 2002 and Freeman and Audia, 2006). In the fashion world, industrialists always strive hard to establish competitiveness to meet their customers' different needs, and thus to surpass other competitors. Given the growing concern regarding environmental protection, better responsiveness and affordability were no longer sufficient once sustainability started to gather momentum (Yeung and Yeung, 2011). Supplying fashion products that meet consumers' green demands reflects a new business direction. To achieve this purpose, fashion entrepreneurs must find a way to design and develop products with a focus on sustainability. Fashion is a unique tangible consumer product with the following features: timeliness, styles, trendiness, and many knock-offs. Although fashion is no longer regarded as a necessity product, it is almost a must-buy product for every season (Solomon and Rabolt, 2009) and probably consumers' most frequently purchased non-food product. This implies the existence of a market with huge consumer demand. As a logical result, the supply of fashion products to such a big global market consumes a large proportion of the world's resources. More importantly, the textile and fashion industries pose a series of threats to the natural environment, from the chemicals used in planting and producing raw materials to the energy consumed in manufacturing, distributing, and retailing the final products. Another crucial issue is that pollutants and detergents are widely used to launder and take care of an apparel product throughout its entire usage life. Irrespective of its ‘gimmicky' image on the catwalk, many people feel that the fashion industry is a ‘dirty industry’ (Fredriksson, 2011 and Solomon and Rabolt, 2009). Sustainable products, also called green products, are products aimed at reducing negative effects on the environment. Specifically, they are designed to minimize energy consumption, use fewer natural resources (biotic or abiotic), and reduce toxic substances in the water, air, and soil. To address the urgent need to reduce harmful effects on the environment, cut back on the exploitation of resources, and eliminate inequities in labor practices, sustainable products have been developed to reflect the trend that is likely to affect every facet of the global fashion industry (Yeung and Yeung, 2011), irrespective of the fact that sustainable apparel still constitutes only a small part of the current fashion market. In the global green movement, energy-saving is the first and probably the most important issue in the fashion industry because energy consumption in the industry is high and constantly increasing (Ngai et al., 2012). In addition to contributing to sustainability development, producing energy-saving products can generate economic and efficiency benefits for a firm, especially in terms of cost reduction. Fashion companies are therefore more willing to develop policies to practice energy saving than any other environmental policies. In recent years, a number of research studies have focused on energy-saving in the clothing and textile industry; for example, Caniato et al. (2012), Hasanbeigi and Price (2012), Ngai et al. (2012), Ozturk (2005) and Woolridge et al. (2006). However, most of these studies focused on the efficiency of using energy in manufacturing or supply chain management. There have been few investigations related to fashion consumers' concerns about the consequences of environmental problems and the influences of these concerns on their demand for energy-saving fashion products (ESFPs). More importantly, there are no guidelines provided for the industry to design and produce ESFPs. To bridge this gap, our main objective was to develop logical and feasible product design scenarios for ESFPs that correspond to consumers' pro-environmental concerns. This paper is organized into several sections. In the next section, we provide a literature review on the basic concepts relevant to the current study. We then describe how the three adopted studies were conducted and how the collected data were analyzed. Finally, a discussion on the contribution of the study and an overall conclusion are provided.

As our society as a whole becomes more concerned with the natural environment, businesses have begun to modify their behavior in an attempt to integrate environmental attitudes into their marketing and purchasing strategies (Elkington, 1994, Mendleson and Polonsky, 1995 and McDonald and Oates, 2006). The design and production of sustainable products is therefore perceived as another new approach to product development from the perspectives of marketing, organization, engineering, and operations management (Dangelico and Pontrandolfo, 2010). Indeed, the pursuance of sustainability helps a firm to manage costs, control risks, and develop new products (Azapagic, 2003). Furthermore, activities involved in sustainable development can improve companies’ performance in such areas as product quality, market share, and profitability (Chung and Tsai, 2007). In the fashion industry, sustainability has become a successful business model. Some major fashion companies have seized on this opportunity to make fundamental changes to their products, business management strategy, and corporate culture; for example, the Green Collections by Gap and carbon-neutral lingerie by Marks and Spencer. However, there are still some major barriers to the complete popularization of sustainable fashion. One of these is the style barrier (Sisco and Morris, 2012), which refers to the common perception that sustainable garments are not stylish and that the design and appearance are unfashionable and unattractive, or do not suit a consumer’s wardrobe needs and/or his/her personality or self-image. This perception represents a serious hurdle for the green movement in the fashion industry. Our major aim in this study has been to investigate whether sustainability and fashionability can coexist and, if so, whether and how we can merge these two conflicting concepts together. Through a three-stage research approach, we found that there are four clusters of fashion consumers with different concerns about the harmful consequences of environmental problems. People with high other-oriented concerns (i.e., HSHO and LSHO) have a stronger intention to purchase fashion products with simple designs for the sake of saving energy; conversely, those with low other-oriented concerns (i.e., HSLO and LSLO) have a weaker intention to do so. In accordance with this finding, we propose two scenarios to guide fashion firms in the development of ESFPs, respectively, for these two groups of consumers. The first scenario, ‘from energy-saving concerns to fashion conceptualization’, starts from a focus on enhancing the efficiency of energy-saving factors and then moves to a focus on the design of fashion elements; while the second scenario, ‘from fashion conceptualization to energy-saving concerns’, starts from a focus on fashion concepts and then moves to a focus on energy-saving elements. Our research on the development of scenarios for the design and production of ESFPs has both academic and industry significance. In terms of academia, our study widens the scope of energy-saving research on a unique product where emphasis is on trendiness and style. In particular, we have demonstrated that the energy factors of sustainable fashion can be classified into the use of materials, the style design of products, and the control of the operational activities. These three groups of energy factors consist of different energy-saving functions in each of the manufacturing, utilization, and disposal stages. Moreover, the inclusion of the concept of modularization can help the design and production of ESFPs through the decoupling of energy factors into individual modules. In terms of the industry, our study is the first to provide a comprehensive guideline and a feasible approach for both style and technical designers in the development of ESFPs for customers with different preferences. The analysis of the energy-saving factors of a fashion product and the development of two practical scenarios can definitely support further sustainable development in the fashion industry. However, this study still has some limitations. First, as the survey study was conducted in South Korea, the results regarding consumers’ behavioral attitude toward environmental issues might be different from those found in other countries. Moreover, as the survey was conducted via the Internet, the sample framework was comprised of more young people. Although this group of respondents is the largest fashion consumer group and whose members are more concerned about sustainability development, the findings in this study should be used with care. Another limitation is that this study provides only an overall concept of the development of product design scenarios for ESFPs and suggests limited examples in explaining the related energy-saving factors. Since the coverage of the energy-saving factors of a sustainable fashion is extensive, more detailed and comprehensive investigations should be undertaken in order to obtain an optimum energy-saving solution for sustainable fashion in a wider perspective.