Increasing the sustainable consumption of mainstream consumers: through design and communication

This thesis explores why some consumers buy sustainable options and others do not. As well as how this can be altered through targeted marketing communication and design. Sustainable intent is no guarantee for sustainable behaviour, but sustainable intent is also not a necessity for sustainable behaviour. It is the sustainable behaviour that...

Design for Product Care

Product care is defined as all activities initiated by the consumer that lead to the extension of a product’s lifetime. It includes repair and maintenance, as well as preventive measures or general careful handling of a product. Product care is one way to extend a product’s lifetime, as it keeps the product in a usable and maintained state for a...

Circular Business Models for Consumer Markets

Over the last decade, the circular economy has gained traction as a concept to transform the society and economy into more sustainable systems. In this context, research into circular business models arose to implement circular economy strategies at the company level. In this thesis, a consumer perspective on circular business models is taken....

Straws That Tell the Wind: Top-Manager Perception of Distant Signals of the Future

This dissertation was prompted by its author’s amazement that only a handful of financial experts had read the arrival of the 2009 recession in the subprime mortgage problems in the American housing market. Despite hefty confrontations in the media between investment experts during the years leading up to the recession, it took the fall of...

Poles Apart: Discerning and opportunistic mind-sets in design learning

Mind-sets play an important role in orienting the decisions and activities that an individual engages in when he or she is designing, and designing involves interaction with complex, open-ended and ambiguous situations. This means that the individual disposition of a person influences the way that he or she reacts, and in designing, the...

From New to Normal: Designing for product category legitimacy

A large number of new products and services, such as electric cars, solar panels, and electric boats are introduced and play an important role during sustainability transitions. However, when introduced, these new products do not fit with established aspects of society such as expectations, habits, and infrastructures, leading to low levels of...

An Exploration of Smart Product-Service System Design: Guidelines and Insights for Design Management

This thesis reports on the findings of a research project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The thesis investigates the design of Smart Product-Service Systems (Smart PSSs), defined as the integration of smart, connected products and e-services, presented to consumers as single solutions to satisfy their needs....

A switch by design: User-centred design of smart energy technologies to change habits of using energy at home

This doctoral thesis demonstrates that households are able and willing to permanently change their habits of using energy, if they are supported by well-designed, user-friendly technology. Previous studies have assessed the impact of smart energy technologies and new tariff structures to make optimal use of sustainable energy supply and the...

Consumers’ perception of relatedness in mental representations of products

The work in this thesis investigates relatedness (as perceived by consumers) in mental representations of products. Just as other objects that are part of the physical world, products are represented in consumers’ minds in the form of concepts. Concepts hold consumers’ knowledge about a product. They consist of sets of features (concrete and...

The strategic relevance of styling and the management of design styles

Typically the Best? Perceived Typicality and Aesthetic Appraisal of Product Appearances

In this dissertation, it is investigated how the current knowledge that people possess about a certain product category influences perception and aesthetic appraisal of product appearances within this product category. Through the reoccurring exposure to product appearances in everyday life people form Internalized Product Appearances (IPA) of...

Really New Stories: The Effect of Early Concept Narratives on Consumer Understanding and Attitudes

Really New Stories typically describe a use setting and a main character - the hero - who is using a really new product. In this doctoral thesis, Ellis van den Hende explains why early consumer input during the development of really new products can be remarkably frustrating to new product managers and product developers. Ellis elucidates how...

Product Attachment

The topic of this doctoral research is the concept of product attachment for ordinary consumer durables. Product attachment is defined as the strength of the emotional bond a consumer experiences with a specific product. Specifically, the research investigated how this bond develops over time and the relationship between product attachment and...

Product personality

Customization Choices: Consumer Product Decisions in Mass Customization Environments

Product appearance and consumer choice