Consumer Value Assessment with Consideration of Environmental Impact

Abstract

In response to climate change, environmental issues, such as greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint, become important. Products are required to take into account of life-cycle thinking in their product design phase. In the past, enterprises only pursued the quality improvement and technology development of green products, but they ignored the value of consumers in those eco-design products. This ignorance results in weak competition; however, it gives the motivation of this study. This study is based on the concept of eco-efficiency to develop a consumer value assessment model with consideration of environmental impact. Several different types of laptop computers are used as examples to illustrate the application of our assessment model. This model simultaneously considers the value of functional performance, the total cost of ownership, and the environmental impact for the product. The environmental impact includes the assessment of energy consumption, pollution and non-recyclability. We believe that our proposed model can be served as a guidance of product improvement or innovation for the designer, and a reference of purchasing products for consumers.