Abstract
The textile and clothing industry is undergoing a sustainability transition, pushing related businesses to adapt to circular economy (CE) models, such as recycling and reuse. This shift has been extensively studied from industry and business model perspectives, but we lack an understanding of the customer perspective, i.e., how circulated products, such as reused and recycled clothes are experienced among consumers. This understanding is crucial, as customer experience plays a significant role in the adoption of CE products. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative interview study to explore how consumer-customers experience recycled textiles and reused clothes. We used an established experience dimension model and mapped how the five dimensions of customer experience—sensory, affective, behavioral, cognitive, and social—present themselves in the sustainable clothing industry. The data comprised 16 qualitative semi-structured interviews analyzed with a coding framework built on the basis of customer experiences, customer values, and the CE business model literature. The results revealed that diverse sensory (e.g., scent), affective (e.g., pride and shame), behavioral (e.g., developing new decision-making rules), cognitive (e.g., learning and unlearning), and social (e.g., getting feedback from others and manifesting own values) aspects shape how consumers experience reused and recycled clothes. We also compared and analyzed the results of the reuse and redistribute model and the recycle model. Our study contributes to the literature of CE business models and customer experience by providing a structured map of diverse experiential triggers and outcomes from the five experiential dimensions, which together reveal how consumers experience circulated products of the clothing industry. These findings enhance our understanding of customers’ motivation to use recycled and reused products and adoption of CE products.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralThe linear model of take, make, and dispose resources and materials has struck a devastating blow to the environment [1]
We discuss our findings on how customer perceive the circular economy (CE) offerings regarding the five experiential dimensions of customer experience for reused and recycled clothes
We provide our results for each experiential dimension on both reused and recycled clothes along with empirical examples
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralThe linear model of take, make, and dispose resources and materials has struck a devastating blow to the environment [1]. The circular economy (CE) is rising in both policies and business [2,3] globally in different industry sectors, and in turn, product and service offerings from all types of CE business models, such as reuse, recycle, or reduce, are increasing and developing. This CE shift has led to individual companies increasingly providing more circular value propositions and pursuing competitive advantage from circularity in their products, services, and solutions [4], as well as industries jointly developing by increasing circulation in their supply–value chains, for example, the textile industry [5,6,7,8]. The change from linearity to circularity, alters the nature and many characteristics of products and with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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