"No Fun, but Very Effective": Consumers' Evaluation of Design Strategies for Product Care

Product care describes consumers' activities to prolong the lifetime of a product, such as repair, maintenance or careful handling. By keeping the product in a functional state, replacement can be postponed. Previous research has identified eight design strategies that can foster product care among consumers. To use these design strategies to...

Measuring consumers’ product care tendency: Scale development and validation

Product care is defined as all activities initiated by consumers that encourage an extension of product lifetimes, such as repair, maintenance, and/or careful handling. A product care scale was developed and validated in a set of four related studies. In study 1, we asked experts to examine the face validity of a set of 35 items. In study 2,...

Design for Product Care—Development of Design Strategies and a Toolkit for Sustainable Consumer Behaviour

Background: Taking care of products is a relevant approach to prolong products’ lifetimes and retain their desired level of performance, and is thus an important aspect of sustainable consumer behaviour. Although consumers have a general motivation to take care of their products, previous research has shown that they struggle to repair,...

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...

Comparing Consumers' Product Care in Product-Service Systems and Ownership

Product-service systems are circular business models that can potentially extend product lifetimes and reduce resource consumption. However, consumer product care is crucial in these business models. We explore consumer product care of newly bought, second-hand, and accessed bicycles and washing machines through an online survey (n = 212). Our...

How to Stimulate People to Take Care of Products? – The Development of a Toolkit for Designers

Taking care of products is an important aspect of sustainable consumer behaviour, because it is an appropriate approach to prolong products' lifetimes. Although consumers in general agree on this and demonstrate a general motivation to take care of their products, previous research has shown that they struggle to repair, maintain or treat their...

Consumers' attitudes towards product care: An exploratory study of motivators, ability factors and triggers

To contribute to a more sustainable way of consumption, products should stay usable as long as possible. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of products. Product care should be understood as any action that helps prolonging the lifetime of a product, such as maintenance, repair etc. These product care activities can be conducted by the...