Consumer preferences for sustainability and their impact on supply chain management: The case of mobile phones

Abstract

Purpose

Consumer values increasingly favor sustainable development in products and services, thereby fostering the need to develop new operational and managerial practices that support sustainability in supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to identify relevant product features related to sustainable development in this context, and use the choice of mobile phone as an example in measuring their importance.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used two different methods (qualitative and quantitative) in two phases. First it organized focus‐group discussions in order to identify the features of sustainability that affect the choice of a mobile phone. The most significant features served as a starting point for the choice of attributes to be included in the final step, choice‐based conjoint analysis (CBC), which assesses respondents' value functions by means of latent class clustering. Between the two major phases it carried out two additional pre‐tests in order to reduce the number of attributes.

Findings

The results provide fundamental information concerning the relative importance of sustainability features in the selection of a mobile phone. The study identified four different clusters of purchasers: updaters, budgeters, environmentalists, and long‐life users. According to the findings, some consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainability features. The authors discuss the potential implications of the results in the context of supply chain design.

Originality/value

The literature on supply chain management tends to see the consumers as a “black box”. This paper reports the first results of opening this box by linking the supply chain perspective to consumer choice behavior.

Citation

Bask, A., Halme, M., Kallio, M. and Kuula, M. (2013), "Consumer preferences for sustainability and their impact on supply chain management: The case of mobile phones", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 43 No. 5/6, pp. 380-406. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-03-2012-0081