A Green Marketing and Operations Management Decision-Making Approach Based on QFDE for Photovoltaic Systems

Abstract

Today, to properly address circular economy practices, strategic decisions encompassing all the various life cycle stages of products or services have become critically important in the market. However, companies still have difficulties in balancing the technical and environmental requirements of their offerings, and numerous studies outline the need for more research on ecodesign tools to support them in decision-making. To reduce such a research gap, a decision-making framework based on the integrated use of the quality function deployment for the environment (QFDE), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), and TOWS matrix methods was developed through a case study related to the provision of photovoltaic solar systems for domestic use. The results achieved show that to better enhance the company’s offering of ensuring customer satisfaction and green compliance, a shift towards a product–service system (PSS) approach is required, and practical implementation strategies are suggested. Overall, this study contributes to the environmental research literature by streamlining marketing strategy planning decision-making through a novel QFD-based approach that aligns customer requirements with environmental concerns and improvement options. Thus, it provides both academics and practitioners with a useful framework to better address the implementation of circular economy practices.