Exploring sustainable consumer behaviour through product design, positioning, and ecommerce experimentation

Tidy began as an exploration of a relatively simple question:

Why do many consumers who express interest in sustainability still struggle to adopt more sustainable everyday purchasing habits?

Rather than approaching this purely as an environmental messaging problem, Tidy explored how:

• product design
• branding
• convenience
• habit formation
• identity

influence sustainable consumer behaviour in practice.

The business focused on developing solid shampoo products specifically targeted toward male consumers. A category where sustainable alternatives were often perceived as either inconvenient, unfamiliar, or misaligned with existing purchasing behaviour.

Building Tidy involved working across:

• product development
• ecommerce
• customer acquisition
• brand positioning
• fulfilment operations
• consumer research.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project was observing how relatively small changes in:

• messaging
• packaging
• product presentation
• onboarding expectations

could significantly influence customer willingness to experiment with unfamiliar sustainable alternatives.

The work also highlighted the importance of reducing behavioural friction when introducing products intended to encourage more sustainable habits.

In practice, many consumers were less motivated by sustainability messaging alone than by combinations of:

• convenience
• product quality
• identity alignment
• ease of integration into existing routines.

Beyond the ecommerce and operational aspects of the business, Tidy became an ongoing exploration of:

• behavioural design
• sustainable consumption
• customer psychology
• how products can support incremental behaviour change without relying purely on moral persuasion.

The experience further reinforced my interest in:

• systems thinking
• consumer behaviour
• sustainability
• the relationship between product design and real-world habit formation.