The Purchase Decision-making Process for Renewable Heating Technologies: A Consumer Perspective

Abstract

The discussion about energy has become an important topic in recent years. For end users, issues, such as price increases for oil and gas, limited resources, and alternative energy sources, have become increasingly important, attracting the attention of scholars and politicians alike. Political discussions on energy issues form part of the daily news. For example, pollution of the environment with carbon dioxide (CO2) and global warming due to the greenhouse effect have become hot topics for debate. Considering the growing importance of renewable energy for households, this investigation focuses on the factors that drive homeowners to purchase renewable energy technologies, as well as on the implications of these factors on the design of future business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing models that can contribute towards an increase in the use of renewable energy. Contextually, the research is based on heating consumption in German households. This thesis examines the potential purchase of existing renewable energy technologies by end users in the German housing market. The increased use of renewable energy is not studied with a view towards future technologies, but rather in terms of the decisionmaking process of end users to possibly invest in already available renewable heating technologies. Decision-making processes are seen as discrete activities which involve individuals over a period of time. These processes include selection and implementation, and have an end point (Wilson, 2004). Based on a grounded research methodology, a series of interviews have been carried out with homeowners as decision-makers for the purchase of existing renewable energy heating systems. The interviewees are homeowners who live in old houses with bad insulation and heating technology standards, still constituting a high proportion of homeowners in Germany. The understanding of their decision-making process can help managers of renewable energy companies, politicians, and local authorities develop viable strategies for increasing the purchase of renewable heating technologies. This research indicates the importance of not only rational decision-making factors as strongly economical related issues affecting the purchase of renewable heating technologies, but also of bounded rational factors influenced by the personal insights of homeowners and their relationship to involved stakeholders within the market for renewable heating technologies.