Sustainability in Consumer's Purchasing Behavior

Today, consumers and other stakeholders are more aware and show increased interest towards products contributing to environmental sustainability. However, it is not self evident that consumers are willing to pay more from products contributing to sustainability. Thus, sustainability initiatives launched by companies may not always provide value for consumers or even encourage consumers for more sustainable behavior.The purpose of this manuscript is to identify those sustainability initiatives that are valued by consumers. As sustainability initiatives are dependent on the type of the product, the scope of this manuscript is limited to mobile phones and to the sustainability initiatives available for mobile phone manufacturers. However, it must be noted that the results may be applied also to other consumer electronics, which have similarities with mobile phones and mobile phone manufacturing.

Autorentext

M.Sc. Pihkala is a doctoral student in the School of Economics at Aalto University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in operations management, inventory management and quality leadership, while his past research has been focused around the topic of sustainability in operations and supply chains.