Conserve & Consume Business Model Innovations

Conserve & Consume is motivated by the sharing economy and the need to design sustainable services, counteracting unsustainable industries. Conserve & Consume include the following service categories: 1. Product-service-systems where users can sell, borrow, lent, and buy products and services. 2. After-sale services for smartphones and tablets (Greenphones). The project aims to strengthen sustainable service innovation and counteract traditional service models with exclusive product ownership and limited utilization of resources. In addition, the project encompasses development of economically sustainable business models for the partners. The following businesses were partners in the project: Schibsted Growth, Greenphones and SoBo Community. Greenphones offers a digital platform for environmentally friendly resale or disposal of mobiles and tablets. SoBo Community is an online marketplace that connects selected independent vintage fashion stores from all over Europe and provides users a personalised access to unique and sustainable fashion in one place. SINTEF, University of Oslo, and Bengler were the research partners. Conserve & Consume addresses the subsequent challenges: 1. To understand how sustainable and collaborative consumption services can be transformed from niche phenomena to mass market services. 2. To understand how innovative technologies and business models can facilitate sharing, lending, and reuse of product without sacrificing user experience and efficiency. The project has approached these challenges by analysing digital consumption data, as well as traditional social science approaches with qualitative and quantitative methods to uncover the motivation and experience in the use of sustainable consumption services. A survey has been conducted with a representative sample of Norwegian consumers. The survey covered consumer preferences in general, and experiences and preferences with redistribution-markets in particular. We have identified the most important exogenous variables for both intention to sell and intention to buy. Finalization of the project has been guided by two important results: 1. While users find environmental aspects to be of high importance, they do not change their behaviour unless the service is as efficient and attractive as traditional, non-sustainable services. 2. The transaction phase, which include the transfer of physical objects, services and payment, is a greater barrier for behaviour change than expected. This has had implications for redistribution services (Schibsted, Greenphones) and product-service-systems (Schibsted, SoBo). We have also carried out a detailed mapping of customer journeys by utilizing CJML (Customer Journey Modelling Language) to obtain deep insight into customer experiences with current services, and to expose customer pain points and potential barriers in the service processes. We have investigated new methods and approaches to document and analyse complex service models. This includes Customer Journey Network models to describe complex service ecologies in a multi-channel service landscape. Concept development is a central activity in the project, and new concepts have been evaluated by end users with SINTEF's Living Lab. This study revealed the participants' good and bad user experiences with redistribution markets in general. The project's PhD fellow has developed cutting-edge concepts such as Radius and Zygo. These are founded in radical and innovative ideas for redistribution markets and have resulted in prototypes that have been presented at international conferences. Research partner Bengler has experimented with new concepts to ease the transaction phase. They developed a prototype, Kokan Gemu, based on peer-to-peer sharing and gamification. By introducing gamification, the transaction phase ? which is often associated with negative user experiences ? turns into competitive entertainment. Kokan Gemu was nominated for a design award in 2016. A literature review of C2C services revealed that the transaction phase not well-explored in the current literature. Thus, the focus in the last project phase was to investigate user barriers and uncover potential patterns across different service types. These results have been applicable in other types of services, and the insight has enabled us to design more coherent and hassle-free customer journeys, increasing perceived service quality and thus increased value creation for the business partners.

The primary objective of Conserve & Consume (C2) is to transform sustainable and collaborative consumption services from niche phenomena to mass market services. Based on the underlying idea of Social Innovation through Business Innovation, C2 services in clude: 1. Peer-to-peer sharing and product service systems (SkyLib, Snapsale, Schibsted-owned peer-to-peer services), where users can share, rent, sell and buy products and services, challenging both traditional production and distribution channels, and business models to enhance resource efficiency; 2. After-sale services for smartphones and tablets (Greenphones), extending the life-cycle of environmentally damaging products; The common denominator that motivates the C2-project is a shared need to d esign sustainable services in ways that fulfil the desires of the majority of consumers. C2 will develop value propositions and corresponding service designs that reflect the needs of mass market consumers, not only those of the highly environmentally eng aged. The most critical R&D challenges concern three key areas: Efficiency, experiences, and environmental consciousness. In order to design sustainable services according to these challenges, C2 will combine big data analysis with qualitative and quant iative methods to uncover the motivation and user experience of consumers, and apply this knowledge in a consumer-centric approach of innovative sustainable services that will change the behaviour of consumers. Project findings will enable the design of i nnovative value propositions to support mass market uptake of sustainable C2 services, and lessons learned will be made available for services providers outside the project.