Università degli Studi di Brescia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Politecnico di Bari, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Stazione Sperimentale per l’Industria delle Pelli e delle Materie Concianti S.R.L.
Within the scope of this project, a comprehensive analysis of literature on sustainable product design in the context of “Made in Italy” will be conducted. The primary objective is to derive insights into drivers that significantly impact sustainable product design, with a keen focus on understanding how customers perceive and interact with such products. This literature review will serve as the foundation for developing informed and data-driven procedures.
In the pursuit of a nuanced understanding of customer perceptions, the project employs, in addition to common multivariate statistical techniques applied to traditional survey data, sophisticated Natural Language Processing techniques, including semantic analysis and sentiment analysis. These techniques will be applied to analyse product reviews and other textual data, aiming to extract relevant insights into the factors shaping sustainable product design from a consumer perspective. This involves also identifying evolving trends or shifts in perceptions over time.
To gather diverse and extensive datasets, the project embraces web scraping as a pivotal tool, leveraging information from product reviews, social media, and various online platforms. An automated scraping tool will be meticulously crafted, underscoring the project’s commitment to efficiency and precision in data collection.
The project’s commitment to a dynamic perspective on sustainable product design is further underscored by the incorporation of time information into textual data analysis. Recognizing the temporal evolution of sentiments and perceptions is indispensable for companies seeking to align themselves with ever-changing consumer preferences. By incorporating temporal elements into the analysis, the project aims to offer a dynamic and up-to-date perspective on sustainable product design trends.
The results of the literature review, semantic analysis, sentiment analysis, and web scraping will converge into development of guidelines for sustainable product development. These guidelines will encapsulate the identified drivers, customer perceptions, and evolving trends. Importantly, the project doesn’t stop at the theoretical level but it takes a pragmatic approach by testing these guidelines on new products with practical laboratory tests. Virtual reality and perception sensor tools will be employed to simulate real-world scenarios, allowing for a meticulous assessment of how customers interact with and perceive sustainable products.
By adopting a holistic strategy that combines literature insights, advanced textual analysis techniques, real-world data and innovative testing approach the project aims to contribute to the development of procedures that are not only theoretically robust but also practically viable and effective in the dynamic landscape of sustainable product development within the “Made in Italy” context.
