Is there a market for refurbished toothbrushes?

Is there a market for refurbished toothbrushes?: An exploratory study on consumers' acceptance of refurbishment for different product categories

Mugge, R. (TU Delft Marketing and Consumer Research)
Safari, I. (External organisation)
Balkenende, R. (TU Delft Circular Product Design)

Bakker, C. (editor)
Mugge, R. (editor)

2017

Refurbishment is the process of collecting used products, assessing their condition, and replacing and/or upgrading parts in order to resell them to other consumers. Although refurbishment is increasingly seen as both economically and environmentally advantageous, it remains questionable whether consumers will accept refurbishment as a viable alternative for all sorts of product categories. In-depth interviews among 18 participants were conducted in which participants were asked to sort 30 product categories on their likelihood to accept or reject a refurbished product from this category and to elaborate on their underlying motives for this. The results revealed the following reasons for either accepting or rejecting a refurbished product for a certain category: financial, functional quality, aesthetic quality, warranty, contamination, and personalisation. Based on the type of product category (e.g., hedonic vs. functional, high vs. low involvement), these reasons are either more or less important to consumers. When designing for refurbishment, designers need to tackle the relevant reasons for the specific category in their design process to stimulate consumers to accept refurbished products.

Refurbishment
Consumer behaviour
Circular economy
Evaluations
Product category

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:52ff88f0-f7ef-4485-8311-afeb561e1143

https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-820-4-293

IOS Press, Amsterdam

978-1-61499-819-8

Plate Product Lifetimes And The Environment 2017: Conference Proceedings

PLATE 2017, 2017-11-08 → 2017-11-10, Delft, Netherlands

Research in Design Series, 9

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2017 R. Mugge, I. Safari, R. Balkenende