Consumer integration in sustainable product development
研究了通过消费者整合方法（如INNOCOPE）促进可持续产品开发，以一家自行车制造商为例开发了电动自行车，并分析了促进或阻碍可持续创新的关键因素。
Abstract Changes in production and consumption patterns are a crucial element of the sustainability agenda. Communication between product developers and users, and user integration in product development, can serve as a means for organizational as well as individual learning processes, resulting in sustainable product development. Recent approaches to innovation research describe the role of users in the innovation process as essential. However, conventional market research gives consumers a passive role as a mere object of research instead of considering them as possible innovators themselves. Improved methods, such as INNOCOPE (innovating through consumer‐integrated product development), tested in this study with a cycle manufacturer and resulting in a new product, a pedelec, are needed for effective communication, activating consumers and enabling them to promote sustainability goals. Through co‐operative product development processes key factors facilitating and obstructing the adoption of sustainable innovations may be identified. Such processes can enhance the emergence and diffusion of sustainable product innovations and different forms and bodies of knowledge can be combined. Integrating users' contextual everyday knowledge of the product with the technical knowledge of companies may lead to mutual learning, technical innovations and changes in consumer behaviour. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.