The Clarification of Discarded Factors Helping Promote Product Sustainability

Abstract:

The clarification of discarded factors of products is of great importance to realize product sustainability and has been discussed from several points of view. In this paper, a pilot survey was conducted to clarify the discarded factors of products. There are totally 77 sample products listed by the participants who are Japanese and aged from 20s to 70s. According to the analysis results, nine fundamental discarded factors are extracted, that is, (1) product-related factors: appearance and design, capacity and size, which belong to hard aspect of product attributes, and function increment, performance degradation, standards change, which are soft aspect; (2) human-centered factors: change of lifestyle (objective needs change), change of preferences (subjective needs change); and (3) environment-related factors: change of market, use environment.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 437)
• Pages: 1005-1011
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.437.1005
• Online since: October 2013
• Authors: Dong Xiao Chu*
• Keywords: Discarded Factors, Disembodied Technical Change, Obsolescence, Product Sustainability

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