Abstract

Environmental degradation and unsustainable consumption have become urgent global issues, with consumer behaviour responsible for nearly 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Although awareness of eco-friendly lifestyles has grown, the actual use of green products remains low. This research uses the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to identify and rank consumer preferences for environmentally sustainable products. Unlike previous studies that examined individual features separately, this work combines consumer perception data from the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) with expert industrial evaluations to close the gap between design and policy implementation. The findings show that consumers value non-toxic, biodegradable, and recyclable materials most, followed by accessibility, emission reduction, and clean energy use. The study offers a structured QFD-based prioritisation model that converts consumer preferences into practical design guidelines for sustainable product development. Policymakers and manufacturers in emerging economies can replicate this framework to align environmental objectives with consumer demands better.

1. Introduction

Over recent decades, unprecedented resource consumption has caused increasing environmental pressures. Rapid economic growth, globalisation, and product demand are driving pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss ^{1, 2, 3}. Energy consumption and carbon footprints are rising sharply ⁴. If these trends remain unchecked, the impacts on ecosystems and human well-being could be severe.

With the growth of economies and industry development, consumption has also increased. It has a significant harmful effect on the environment, as no products are completely ecological ^{5, 6}. Although consumerism has brought prosperity to society, achieving true sustainability remains challenging. During development and production, waste is generated at various stages of manufacturing and final disposal ^{7, 8}. Fonseca ⁹ stated that responsible consumption and production promote sustainable patterns. Green products designed to minimise adverse environmental impacts across their life cycles offer a pathway towards balancing economic growth with environmental responsibility. Although awareness of green lifestyles is increasing, turning this awareness into product adoption remains a challenge. Previous research shows gaps between environmental concern and actual purchasing behaviour ^{10, 11}. Understanding what consumers value most in green products is vital for bridging this gap.

This study fills these research gaps by using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to rank consumer preferences for eco-friendly products. It combines consumer survey data from Delhi NCR with expert insights from manufacturing industries to create a clear connection between consumer needs (“WHATs”) and engineering design features (“HOWs”). This combined approach improves both the scientific understanding and industrial application of QFD in sustainability efforts.

The specific objectives of this study are to:

Identify and prioritise main consumer preferences for eco-friendly product features that promote environmental sustainability; and

Create a flexible QFD-based framework that manufacturers and policymakers can adopt to synchronise product innovation with environmental goals.

This approach builds on existing QFD methods by incorporating sustainability goals into the initial product design stages, offering new perspectives on implementing consumer-driven sustainability within the Indian industrial environment.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the relevant literature; Section 3 describes the methodology; Section 4 presents the results and analysis; and Section 5 offers conclusions and implications.

2. Literature Review

Population projections estimate that nearly 10 billion people will be living by 2050 ¹², implying continued increases in resource use, waste, and pollution. Studies show that sustainable manufacturing — creating durable, eco-efficient products — can help reduce some environmental pressures ^{9, 13}. Key drivers are tighter environmental regulations, stakeholder expectations, consumer preferences, and cost benefits from waste minimisation ¹⁴.

Green products are generally characterised by their minimal environmental impact throughout their life cycle, the use of non-harmful materials, energy efficiency, and eco-friendly disposal methods ^{15, 16, 17}. Earlier studies also highlight factors such as emotional value, perceived quality, eco-labels, price sensitivity, brand image, accessibility, and aesthetics as key influences on the adoption of green products ^{18, 19, 20}.

Most studies tend to focus either on narrow product categories or on individual preferences in isolation. There is less research that systematically combines multiple consumer preferences and ranks them comprehensively to directly guide product design. The QFD method has been used only sparingly but shows promise in linking consumer input with engineering features, especially in sustainability contexts. Biswas and Roy ²¹ demonstrated that specific product attributes, such as packaging, functionality, and perceived value, significantly influence green product choices. The various customer preferences identified from the literature are listed in Table 1.

3. Research Methodology

To promote conscious consumerism, it is essential to incorporate customers’ preferences for eco-friendly products into product design and production. However, balancing multiple preferences can be challenging due to cost and other limitations. Several methods exist for ranking these preferences, such as various MCDM techniques and BWM. Nonetheless, quality function deployment (QFD) is more suitable here because it boosts customer satisfaction by incorporating their feedback and requires less time and expense. Therefore, this study employs QFD techniques to prioritise the preferences.

Data were gathered through consumer surveys in Delhi NCR. To achieve a representative sample, respondents were chosen based on age, income, education, and gender. Furthermore, manufacturing experts were consulted to convert consumer needs into design features.

QFD was initially developed in Japan during the late 1960s under the framework of total quality control ³⁰. Since then, it has been adopted by numerous companies worldwide, including IBM, Motorola, and DuPont, across industries such as automotive (e.g., General Motors, Toyota, Ford), education, healthcare, and software development ^{31, 32, 33, 34, 35}. QFD can help reduce quality-related problems ³⁶. Its benefits include recognising customer needs and expectations, planning, and reducing ³⁷. The QFD method helps identify customer requirements and translate them into design solutions ³⁸. Every organisation with customers aims to determine the actions needed to satisfy or delight them, and QFD is the preferred tool for this purpose. Quality professionals often refer to QFD by various names, such as matrix product planning, decision matrix, and customer-driven engineering. Customer expectations are expressed through the Voice of the Customer. QFD is a customer-centred quality management and product development approach. It involves listening to customer feedback, converting it into detailed engineering specifications, and planning the production of products that meet their expectations.

QFD is visually represented and used to link consumer requirements (“WHATs”) with design or engineering features (“HOWs”). The House of Quality (HOQ) enables converting qualitative consumer preferences into quantifiable, weighted features. The connections between WHATs and HOWs are categorised (strong, medium, weak) to calculate their relative importance.

House of Quality (HOQ), with its different regions shown in Figure 1.

Region 1: It is also called “What region”. It represents the customer’s requirements and the importance of each of them, β_i.

Region 2: It is also known as “How region”. It represents the design specifications and the way of its development.

Region 3: It shows the relationship between 'how' and 'what'. The relationship is shown by the numbers Nij = 0, 1, 3..., 9.

Region 4: This region shows the combination of the design specification and its acceptance level, and the score

(1)

Region 5: The comparison of the product and competitors and the fulfilment of customer needs.

Region 6: The comparison between design specifications and their improvement affects each other.

Then, after identifying the customer needs, complete the preparation of the HOQ and after completion start to create the next matrix by placing all the important needs of the HOQ on the left side of the second matrix and their properties on the right side of the next matrix to facilitate communication and ensure that targets are not lost, The QFD matrix phases shown in Figure 2.

• Identifying consumer preferences from literature and survey responses.

• Selection of relevant engineering and design features through expert consultation.

• Development of an interrelationship matrix using a weighting scale (9-3-1).

• Computation of relative importance and ranking of consumer preferences.

4. Results

Customer expectations should be integrated into the product's design and manufacturing phases. A meeting has been convened with industry experts to determine how customer preferences can influence product development. Five experts from manufacturing industries A, B, C, D, and E have been invited. Industry A is based in Gurgaon (Haryana), Industry B in Bahadurgarh (Haryana), Industries C and D in Delhi, and Industry E in Mohali (Punjab). Industries A, B, and C produce medical equipment, while D and E manufacture auto parts for companies like Telco and Swaraj. Once customer preferences are translated, product design can proceed to meet these expectations. During development, customer preferences and environmental considerations should both be prioritised. Environmental impact can be minimised by adopting zero-carbon footprint manufacturing, utilising eco-efficient, reusable, recyclable, biodegradable, and non-toxic materials, expanding market demand to lower prices, implementing tighter tolerances, and adhering to regulatory sustainability guidelines. Strong top management commitment is also vital to achieving these goals. The extracted consumer preferences and related design features are summarised in Table 2.

The third room of the HOQ illustrates the interconnection between the WHATs and the HOWs. These relationships are classified as ‘strong’, ‘medium’, ‘weak’, or ‘none’ for each pair of WHATs and HOWs, based on the extent to which the parameters contribute to meeting the VOC. A standard ratio is 9-3-1, where 9 indicates strong links, 3 indicates moderate links, and 1 indicates weak links. In the relationship matrix, these are shown by the symbols ○ (9), □ (3), and △ (1). The interrelationship matrix of WHATs and HOWs, and the House of Quality detailing various quality functions, are shown in Figure 3. The feature rankings derived from the QFD are listed in Table 3.

Consumers prioritise environmental safety and material recyclability most. Market access is a key secondary factor, indicating that even eco-friendly product designs face barriers like limited availability or high costs. While emission reduction and clean energy are also important, consumers perceive them as slightly less urgent than material safety and market access.

5. Conclusion & Implications

This study introduces an innovative framework that connects consumer preferences to engineering design parameters using the QFD method to support sustainable product development. Results show that material safety—especially the use of non-toxic, biodegradable, and recyclable materials—remains the top consumer priority. Concerns about market accessibility, emissions control, and the use of renewable energy follow.

This research is original in combining consumer and expert feedback within a structured QFD matrix, thereby providing thorough prioritisation of sustainability-focused product features. Unlike earlier QFD studies that treated environmental factors more abstractly, this study demonstrates how green consumer insights can be translated into measurable, design-related metrics.

Practical Implications:

For manufacturers: prioritise using safe, recyclable materials; enhance supply chains to improve accessibility; and adopt technologies that reduce emissions.

For Policymakers: Develop incentives and regulations to promote eco-friendly materials, enhance infrastructure for distributing green products, and simplify standards and certifications.

For future research: consider conducting comparative studies across various regions or product categories, tracking preferences over time as awareness and technology develop, and integrating pricing and willingness-to-pay trade-offs more thoroughly.

Overall, this research enhances sustainable manufacturing by offering an empirically validated, repeatable framework that translates consumer preferences into practical design and policy recommendations for developing economies.

References