Citation:
Cook M., Angus A., Gottberg A., Smith R. and Longhurst P. (2007). Promoting sustainable resource use through product service systems. CIWM Conference, Waste: A Global Resource. Technical Session 5, Resource Recovery. Paignton, Torbay, UK, 12-15 June 2007.
Abstract:
In a world of declining prices for manufactured goods and increased global
competition, many manufacturers have developed a range of services that
complement and in certain instances replace traditional products, in an attempt
to maintain or boost profitability. Resultant products have been classified as
Product Service Systems (PSS) and comprise both an tangible artefact and
intangible service, which are conflated through business processes to deliver
value to customers. Research suggests that the environmental performance of PSS
may be significantly better than that of traditional products. Theoretically,
improvements in resource productivity that might be gained from use of PSS as
opposed to traditional products are potentially enormous: somewhere between a
factor of 10 and 20. To realise these environmental benefits, there is a need to
identify instances where conventional material products can be substituted by
PSS. This will depend on the criteria upon which consumers’ decisions are made.
One prominent theory of decision-making assumes that a decision to buy is based
on the performance of product or service against well-defined criteria, such as
price and quality. An analytical technique is required to enable consideration
of multi-criteria and provide information regarding the relative importance of
each criterion. A review of the literature was undertaken to identify suitable
methodologies for this study. Three techniques were identified as being
appropriate, namely: Choice Experiments (CE); Multi-Attribute Utility Theory
(MAUT); and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP was seen to be a
suitable tool to enable consumers to compare product service systems with
traditional products and identify substitutions, as it is a robust method that
is particularly suited to decisions made with limited informatio