An Exploration of the Value of Timeless Design Styles for the Consumer Acceptance of Refurbished Products

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Introduction and literature review are well performed, allowing the readers to understand the meaning of refurbished products, the importance of encouraging consumers to buy this kind of products, and thy this project is important.

1) The main concern I have for this paper is its sample size. Even though the sample size for a qualitative research is not necessary as large as that for a quantitative research, the validity of the sample size needs to be proved, and the representativeness of samples for the targeted population also needs to be explained.

2) L240, Is "Table 2" a miss for Tabel 1?

3) I would suggest to highlight  the exclusive findings in your project compared with previous studies in order to highlight the value of your work more strongly, either in the discussion or conclusion section. In the current version, the findings sound basic to me.

Author Response

Authors’ responses to the reviewers’ comments on:

Sustainability-688074

 

An exploration of the value of a timeless design style for the consumer acceptance of refurbished products

We would like to thank you for the time and attention that you have given to our manuscript. The critiques were very well thought through and gave us a significant amount of direction for strengthening our manuscript. As we hope is clearly evident from this revised manuscript, we have thoroughly rewritten our initial submission to try and address all concerns. Below, we indicate how we have addressed each of your comments. For your convenience, we first quote your concern and then provide our response to it.

Reviewer 1:

Comment:

Introduction and literature review are well performed, allowing the readers to understand the meaning of refurbished products, the importance of encouraging consumers to buy this kind of products, and thy this project is important.

 

 

Response to general comment:

Thank you very much for your positive comments!

 

Comment 1:

Reviewer #1: The main concern I have for this paper is its sample size. Even though the sample size for a qualitative research is not necessary as large as that for a quantitative research, the validity of the sample size needs to be proved, and the representativeness of samples for the targeted population also needs to be explained.

 

 

Response to comment 1:

Thank you for raising this issue. We agree that it would be useful to explain the sample size and choice of the sample. We now strengthened the Methods section by adding a paragraph (2.2. materials and methods, p. 5) to explain the sample size and choice for the sample:

 

“We selected 21 participants of various backgrounds in terms of age (age range 28-76) and socio-economic backgrounds because of the exploratory nature of this study. Specifically, we wanted to capture how different consumers perceive refurbished products and were interested in the full spectrum of responses, rather than focusing on one specific target group. Prior research concluded that different target groups may choose refurbished products for different reasons (Mugge et al., 2017) and thus it is important to include a diverse group of participants to provide a comprehensive understanding of the influence of specific design styles on responses to refurbished products. In addition, the circular economy will only have significant effects if many consumers are willing to turn to circular alternatives, such as refurbished products.

Due to the qualitative nature of the study, a relatively small sample size is generally sufficient as long as data saturation is achieved. Data saturation is achieved when any new interview only delivers approximately one or two additional codes. To achieve data saturation for heterogeneous groups, Hagaman and Wutich [46] propose to interview 12-16 participants. Accordingly, we decided to interview a total of 21 participants and to check for data saturation in the analysis.”

 

Due to your comment on the sample size, we also added a paragraph on our data saturation in the discussion setting (4.2 limitations and future research, p. 14) and discuss that our findings need to be further validated in larger samples with a quantitative approach to make them more generalizable. We, therefore, added the following section:

 

“A limitation of our research is that we took a qualitative approach to uncover the associations that different timeless designs would trigger with consumers, resulting in a relatively small sample size. We believe that our sample size was sufficient for the exploratory focus of our research, which was also supported by the fact that data saturation was reached after 18 interviews. Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile to investigate the effects of timeless designs in more quantitative settings using larger samples.”

 

Comment 2:

Reviewer #1: L240, Is "Table 2" a miss for Tabel 1?

Response to comment 2:

We thank the reviewer for sharply spotting this mistake and corrected it to table 1 in the text.

 

Comment 3:

Reviewer #1: I would suggest to highlight the exclusive findings in your project compared with previous studies in order to highlight the value of your work more strongly, either in the discussion or conclusion section. In the current version, the findings sound basic to me.

 

Response to comment 3:

We highlighted the exclusivity of our findings in the discussion section by making amendments to section 4. General discussion, p. 11:

 

‘The circular economy is a promising path towards more sustainable production of consumer goods. One challenge within the circular economy is however that current circular products, such as refurbished products, are often not considered a desirable and viable alternative to new products by consumers [9,10]. While prior research on consumer acceptance of refurbished products has explored the functional characteristics [8,22,23] of refurbished products or why refurbished products are not a desirable consumer choice to most consumers [9,10], research on how to make refurbished products more attractive via design is sparse [24]. This research contributes to the current literature on consumer acceptance of refurbished products [20,21,24,25] by exploring the value of the product appearance of refurbished products for enhancing consumer acceptance. Prior research has only focused on the effects of possible scratches on refurbished products [24] or the aesthetics of new products [34-39]. Building on prior research, we conducted the first qualitative study that combines knowledge on the product aesthetics of new products and knowledge on the consumer response to refurbished products. Thereby we explored potential pathways to design product appearances that remain appealing across multiple product lifecycles in refurbished products. Specifically, we focus on the value of timeless designs for enhancing consumer acceptance of refurbished products.’

As a response to comments of both reviewers, we also added a conclusion section (4.3. Conclusions, p. 15) that summarizes our findings and emphasizes the link between our findings, circular products and sustainable consumer behaviour.

We would like to thank both reviewers for their comments. We believe that your comments have given us ample direction to revise our manuscript and hope that you agree that this has resulted in a much stronger manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article deals with a topic of interest and very current and proposes solutions for the sustainability of resources. therefore it is very suitable for the sustainability journa theme. In my opinion I should emphasize in more detail in the introduction
the circular economy. The concept of circular economy and its impact on
sustainability must be deepened. You should also highlight the contribution to the circular economy and
the sustainability of your proposal in the conclusions.

Author Response

Authors’ responses to the reviewers’ comments on:

Sustainability-688074

An exploration of the value of a timeless design style for the consumer acceptance of refurbished products

 

We would like to thank you for the time and attention that you have given to our manuscript. The critiques were very well thought through and gave us a significant amount of direction for strengthening our manuscript. As we hope is clearly evident from this revised manuscript, we have thoroughly rewritten our initial submission to try and address all concerns. Below, we indicate how we have addressed each of your comments. For your convenience, we first quote your concern and then provide our response to it.

 

Reviewer 2:

 

Comment:

Reviewer #2: This article deals with a topic of interest and very current and proposes solutions for the sustainability of resources; therefore it is very suitable for the sustainability journal theme.

 

Response to comment 1:

Thank you for your positive comments on the topic.

 

Comment 2:

Reviewer #2: In my opinion I should emphasize in more detail in the introduction the circular economy. The concept of circular economy and its impact on sustainability must be deepened.

 

Response to comment 2:

Based on your comment, we included an extra section to emphasize the Circular Economy and its impact in the introduction in paragraph 1.1. (p. 1).

 

“A promising path to sustainable development is the circular economy. The circular economy aims to replace our current take-make-waste model of producing products (linear economy) with a ‘regenerative system in which resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimized by slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops.

This can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling' [4] (p. 766). In the circular economy, the production of waste and use of virgin resources is minimized, which can contribute to more sustainable production and consumption. In the current linear economy, most value of products is lost when these are discarded after their use phase. In the circular economy, value is however retained because it is restorative by design: materials for the production of consumer goods, components of products, and finally, complete products are recovered and restored through various circular strategies. The most preferred strategies in a circular economy try to maintain the highest utility and value and thus keep consumer products intact by aiming for extended use periods either with the first owner or a successful second life via refurbishment or remanufacturing. These circular strategies save production costs, such as energy, water, and virgin resources need to manufacture new products. “

 

Additionally, we clarified why refurbishment is decreasing the environmental impact and saves finite resources compared to the production of new products. Thereby we aimed to further strengthen the link between sustainability and refurbishment as a circular strategy by amending the following text passage (1.2 Refurbishment is a solution to our waste and resource problem, p. 2):

 

“From an environmental perspective, in refurbishment, only dysfunctional parts are renewed; it can, therefore, save up to 70% virgin materials, 90% water, and 80% pollutant emissions compared to manufacturing new products, and therefore has a lower environmental impact than new products or remanufactured products [6].”

 

Comment 3:

Reviewer #2: You should also highlight the contribution to the circular economy and the sustainability of your proposal in the conclusions.

 

Response to comment 3:

In response to comments from both reviewers, we added a final conclusion section (4.3. Conclusions, p. 15). We supported the conclusion section with a link to the circular economy as well as to sustainability as indicated in the following text passage:

 

“4.3. Conclusions.

Refurbishment is a promising circular strategy that can make the production of consumer goods more sustainable by saving finite resources and minimizing waste. Refurbished products are however not a desirable consumer choice to most consumers yet, partly because the aesthetic appearance of refurbished products is considered less attractive than the appearance of new products.

In this research, we explored whether enhancing the product appearance of refurbished products, by means of two types of timeless design styles, can increase the consumer acceptance of refurbished products. We uncovered that refurbished products in the neo-retro design style and in the simplistic design style evoke favourable perceptions in consumers and subsequently enhance the attractiveness of refurbished products. By considering these findings in the design process, we hope to inspire further research to inform designers on making circular products that remain desirable in multiple life cycles and therefore stimulate sustainable consumption with circular products.”

 

We would like to thank both reviewers for their comments. We believe that your comments have given us ample direction to revise our manuscript and hope that you agree that this has resulted in a much stronger manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf