Psychological Barriers to Sustainability: Understanding Consumer Demand for Products with Redundant Functionalities

Tamar Makov, George E. Newman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of multifunctional products, survey data suggests that instead of relying on one multifunctional product, consumers now rely on a community of multifunctional products, using them interchangeably to perform similar tasks. Such consumption patterns stand in stark contrast to consumers’ well-documented aversion towards waste. Why are consumers willing to dispose of multifunctional products that still have some working capabilities and/or to pay for functional redundancies? We suggest that controlling for the absolute level of performance (e.g., the megapixels of the camera), consumers perceive the same functionality to be less valuable when it is performed by a multifunctional product (e.g., the camera on a smartphone) than by a single, dedicated product (an inexpensive digital camera). We investigate this phenomenon across a series of four experiments which are aimed at documenting the basic effect and elucidating the underlying psychology.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)17-25
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Sustainable Marketing
Volume3
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2022

Keywords

  • Circular supply chains
  • consumer behavior
  • lab experiments
  • multifunctional products
  • sustainable consumer behavior
  • sustainable consumer psychology

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Marketing

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