Design has become an extensive catchword that embraces all terms and business practices. It is pivotal in the growth or otherwise of global business practices. Elegance and meretricious finery are highlighted in both aesthetic and functional realms as utilitarian necessity. Besides, there is visible and incontestable eruption of affinity and propensity in Nigerians to buy durable designs but the economy of the nation and by extension, the individuals leaves much to be desired. Huge investments on varieties of product designs for local consumption in Nigeria dwindled on daily basis because of low living incomes and domestic earnings. The proliferation and infiltration of fake products for Nigerian consumer market was necessitated by a great deal of enthusiasm in the purchase of cheap but attractive designs of low quality. Product design is generally judged by their characteristic contents and the sensation of packaging. There is the exigent need to cut corners with poverty in the acquisition of life-supporting products such as building materials, automobile spare parts, electrical-electronics, textiles and clothing products, foot wears, etc. This study argues that every mention of design emerges with new proficiencies and specialties essential for production, consumption as well as the ordering of principles that constantly propel interests in acquisition. The study also looks into the Nigerian economic capacity to acquire quality products with a view to reviewing the investors’ practices. The reasons enumerated above provide answers to why Nigeria is readily a dumping ground for sub-standard designs in recent time. Survey method was used to carry out the study. The instrument used was questionnaire in which responses were elicited from local investors who purposively formed the sample size. Findings arising from this study showed that design products from some Asian countries top the list of consumer favourites. Although, consumer and professional product designers are collaborating in their fields to give integrity and essential marketability to make designs usable, findings revealed that only very little of original goods exist side by side with sub-standard products that flood everywhere in the country. There are pockets of sharp practices and there exists greater suspicion for a Memorandum of Understanding between the Nigerian investors and their foreign business partners on relaxation of qualitative materials for the production of sub-standard designs which the impoverished majority could afford in the Nigerian market. The paper concludes that the wide-ranging influx of sub-standard designs into Nigeria often reveal hidden attitudes of the investors, their foreign partners and the end-users.
Keywords: Dumping ground, Economy, Integrity, Investors, Poverty, Sub-standard
