9. Retail and Use-Life Management

This step concerns the 'point of sale' or equivalent and the support systems that will sustain the product's value over its use-life and encourage careful 'consumption'. This involves both material aspects, like repair and technical support, but also symbolic, 'declarative' aspects: the ways in which products are branded, promoted, represented and 'placed', as well as the ways in which these strategies are undertaken. Incidentally or intentionally, these aspects communicate certain meanings about products to users (this is again an issue of commensurability). The extents to which these meanings are supported by the design of products has a significant role in determining product use-life and influencing innovations in use.

The idea that things are 'disposable' for example is an idea that has been learnt and has become a cultural habit. Clearly, most things are not 'disposable', they are just 'hidden' in landfill. This has a variety of ongoing environmental effects, not least on the 'need' for newer versions of those same things. In order to change such cultural habits, we have to intervene at the promotional level and make other kinds of behaviours, such as product reuse, more visible and desirable. This means creating and promoting new kinds of associations and stories about products.

As the designer, you are best placed to think about how you could promote your product's specific sustain-abilities: durability, adaptability, shareability, reliability, mobility etc. Your first task then is to develop 'stories' about your product; its 'character profile', its 'lifestyle', 'career', appreciative users, putting it into future scenarios (where it has aged gracefully, for example). These could form the basis of promotional strategies for new but also remanufactured or used products, indicating that something is 'better than new 'cause it has a story' (to quote David Mamet). In doing this exercise it might be worth talking to other designers about their product 'stories' (how did this product come into being?). It is sometimes useful to unpack prevalent 'stories' about products to discover the unsustainable associations they have created, which you might be able to 'jam' or design against. A good place to start here is with a critical observation of advertising media. (Nb. the Eternally Yours book listed in the Resources section, which we are told may soon be available on the net, provides some great examples of such strategies).

Conversely, there might be ways to 'agree' your product into use, i.e. showing how it will save the user money. Though price is a powerful influencer of choice, it is not necessarily a behaviour changing mechanism. An important issue commonly raised in relation to price reduction strategies is what will 'consumers' spend the balance on? Another problem is the reduction in symbolic value 'cheap' products entail. Strategies to mitigate the 'cheapness' of plastic bags by 'pricing them up' at 'point of sale' are, for example, having great success in modifying how they are both seen and used (see Planet Ark's website). Another 'agreement' strategy is showing how a product will gain in value over time or improve quality of life (as distinct from elevating materialistic life styles).

The following questions relate to practical issues associated with this stage of the product's life. Some of them suggest research tasks—particularly in relation to the practices of retailers and their relation to manufacturers. It is worth noting that this stage of a product's life often falls off the agenda of LCA—therefore knowing about this stuff gives you a bit of a market edge!

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