All Trade Allies are Not Created Equal: Identifying Leverage Points in the Commercial Lighting Market

Regardless of the product or purchaser, most purchase decisions are driven by situational factors – a “choice architecture”. Recent primary and secondary research found that commercial lighting market actors have a strong influence on the lighting choices presented to commercial end-users. Identifying which trade allies a commercial lighting program should target in order to maximize market adoption of advanced technologies is critical in assisting in the design and implementation of effective and efficient energy efficiency programs. This paper presents evaluation findings that illuminate the choice architectures currently existing in the California commercial lighting market and the key influence points within the market. First, a commercial lighting choice architecture and influence framework was informed by a critical synthetic review of available literature. Subsequent primary data collection – interviews with commercial lighting manufacturers, distributors, contractors and end-users – suggests that this framework indeed exists, and the actions of market actors within the commercial lighting market have a strong effect on purchase decisions. So which market actors hold the golden ticket? Do any? The results suggest that while contractors are typically the only lighting market actor to directly “touch” the end-user, the knowledge, available choices, business arrangements, and decisions of market actors further up the supply chain have a direct impact on what lighting technologies contractors present and recommend to their customers. Manufacturers make a wide range of products, and are certainly the ultimate dictator of what exists in the market. However, could a key leverage point be the distributors? We believe so.