Opportunities and Challenges of Product-Service Systems for Sustainable Mass Customization: A Case Study on Televisions

Abstract

The diversification of products that adapt to specific customer needs has been a growing competitive advantage for many businesses. As customers become more self-aware and demanding in their buying preferences, mass customization (MC) is experiencing a considerable growth. In the light of growing trends towards sustainable consumption, MC can become a strong drive for the implementation of sustainable products and services. Product-service systems (PSS) exhibit attributes that can be harmonized with several features of MC, for instance, the enhanced communication mechanisms between customer and businesses. Hence, in this paper, we explore the potential conjunctions of the PSS and MC business models from a sustainable point of view. More specifically, we describe the opportunities and challenges of a sustainable product-service system (S-PSS) with focus on environmental impacts and how these services can influence the environmental performance of a mass-customized product. A case study is presented that describes the assessment approach that is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method on three comparative scenarios for sustainable product-service systems for a television. The scenarios selected are take-back service, extended warranty and changing to a renewable energy provider. Part of the analysis and results of this study are based on the research project SMC-EXCEL, a joint research programme supported by ECO-INNOVERA (funded by BAFU (Switzerland), BMBF (Germany) and TUBITAK (Turkey)).