Sustainability in consumer's purchasing behavior - Case mobile phones

Abstract

Today, consumers and other stakeholders are more aware and show increased interest towards products contributing to environmental sustainability. However, the added value that sustainability generates for consumers is most likely dependent on product or product category. Therefore, sustainability initiatives launched by companies may not always provide value for consumers or even encourage them for more sustainable behavior.

In addition, rapid technological development in mobile phone industry is transforming mobile phones to become outdated in faster and faster cycles. This has materialized in a very high mobile phone replacement rate. Moreover, all of this has contributed to an ever growing demand for sustainable solutions in mobile phone industry.

This study was set out to identify the sustainability actors that contribute to the consumers’ mobile phone purchasing behavior by utilizing focus group method. The identified factors were linked to the theory through a framework, which incorporates the most common metrics in estimating the sustainability of a company. In addition, the significance of these identified factors was assessed during the interviews.

The results show that consumers considered mobile phone working life as single most significant sustainability factor when purchasing mobile phone. It was also identified that the modularity of mobile phone has crucial role in extending working life as it enables efficient upgrading of hardware in mobile phones. The working conditions were identified approximately as significant as working life but they were considered more as a precondition for the company.