A tool for assessing customers' barriers for consuming remanufactured products

DS 87-1 Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 17) Vol 1: Resource Sensitive Design, Design Research Applications and Case Studies, Vancouver, Canada, 21-25.08.2017

Year: 2017
Editor: Anja Maier, Stanko Škec, Harrison Kim, Michael Kokkolaras, Josef Oehmen, Georges Fadel, Filippo Salustri, Mike Van der Loos
Author: Almefelt, Lars; Rexfelt, Oskar
Series: ICED
Institution: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Section: Resource Sensitive Design, Design Research Applications and Case Studies
Page(s): 011-020
ISBN: 978-1-904670-89-6
ISSN: 2220-4342

Abstract

One opportunity to address our world's environmental challenges is to change our patterns of consumption towards more sustainable ones, e.g. buying used products, renting products, and joining pools for co-consumption. All of these patterns share at least one point of departure: They imply that people use products that other people have used before. In this context, remanufacturing is a particular opportunity. In principle, remanufacturing means that a used product is industrially renovated in order to assure quality. However, remanufacturing is still just a niche, and the established pattern of consumption and production - involving new products - is very dominant. Reflecting this, there is a need to better understand how to gain acceptance for remanufactured products, and in particular to understand customers' barriers and drivers for consuming used and remanufactured products. Reflecting this background, the tool presented in this paper is aiming to support remanufacturing organisations to get a better understanding about the customers and their possible ways of reasoning when they approach an offer based on a remanufactured product.

Keywords: Sustainability, Circular economy, User centred design, Remanufacturing, Evaluation

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