Empowering Prosumers in Circular Economy

TU/E, hVa AND KPN

This research project focuses on trust as a key issue in establishing productive consumer-producer relationships through technology? How might design and technology empower customers to feel secure, in control, or motivated enough to enter into a productive partnership with a service provider like KPN to predetermine when a tangible product should be returned in order to be prepared for a next use-cycle?

How can online platforms help consumers and providers/manufacturers to:

1) Enter into dialogue about values and practical concerns on circular economy related to products, allowing providers/manufacturers to build and successfully exploit business models around long and/or extended product use and/or recycling.

2) Boost consumers trust and perceived autonomy by providing knowledge and insight (transparency) with regard to the potential consequences and benefits of different choices?

 

 

Background

In a circular economy, being able to control the flow of (obsolete) products is essential for service providers and manufacturers. Control over the flow of tangible products allows service providers and manufacturers in a circular economy to leverage resources and extend product-and material lifetimes in the most efficient and effective way, from an environmental as well as an economic perspective. This control enables service providers and manufacturers to retain the highest amount of added economic value of products and their constituent materials and as such helps them in building successful circular business models around products with a long and/or extended product lifetime.

Circular business models typically do not permanently transfer product ownership and make use of interventions such as repair, upgrading, refurbishment, and re-manufacturing in order to preserve product integrity for as long as possible. This much needed increased level of control however cannot-and should never be-forced upon the customer/end-user, but instead needs to be granted to the service provider/manufacturer by the customer/end-user voluntarily, based on the perceived mutual advantages of doing so.