Arnould

1
Chapter
19
Disposal, Recycling and Reuse
2
Objectives

• Understand that disposition is a growth industry
  that provides many marketing opportunities
• Recognize that product disposition is an
  increasingly important area for public policy
• Explain the differences between voluntary and
  involuntary disposition
• Describe the social, individual and situational
  factors that affect disposition choices
• Realize how understanding disposition provides
  key insights into consumption behavior

3
Why be Interested in Disposition?

• Consumers care
• Disposition is a growth industry providing many
  marketing opportunities
• Disposition is an important area for policy
  activity
• Who pays?
• Toxic dumping
• Consumer welfare
• Disposition provides insight into consumption
  behaviors that have practical implications for
  managers

4
Disposition

• Encompasses all those behaviors that consuming
  units undertake to divest themselves of undesired
  goods and services.
• Green approach minimizing the need for
  disposition
• deconsumption and voluntary simplicity
• consuming less

5
Disposition

• Voluntary vs. involuntary disposition
• Some products may be difficult to divest because
  of attachment
• spatial or physical
• emotional

6
The Disposition Process

• Disposition is more like a process than an event
• Physical and emotional disposition processes
  often take place in stages consumers often
  desire to place unwanted items in storage for a
  time to reduce their emotional connections
• Factors affecting the disposition process
• Product characteristics
• Situational factors finances, storage space,
  fashion change, etc.
• Life status change e.g., marriage, aging, etc.

7
Profiles of Disposition Behaviors

• Discard it Abandon, etc.
• Sell it
• Swap meets informal markets to buy or trade
  used goods
• Electronic flea markets Internet auction sites
• Donate it
• Gift it
• e.g., Preinheritance living bequests of
  household resources
• Store it
• time-marked goods help people tell their life
  stories
• Recover it
• close-loop manufacturing recycling is built
  into products from the design phase on

8
Solid Waste Generation
9
U.S. Landfill Contents 1990 Myth and Reality
Source Rathje and Murphy 1992, p. 106
10
Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on
Disposition

• Garbage was often left where it lay in human
  dwellings with layers of new flooring
  occasionally laid over the waste.
• In ancient times, pottery was equivalent of
  modern containers made of glass or plastic it
  was extensively recycled.
• In the late Middle Ages in Europe, failure to
  deal with urban solid-waste disposal led to the
  Black Plague.

11
Disposition Trends

• Corporate move from concern about pollution to
  waste prevention because it is profitable.
• Product stewardship focuses on minimizing all
  environmental impacts of a product over its
  biography.
• Design for Environment(DFE) a product
  stewardship tool for creating products that are
  easier to recover, reuse, or recycle.
• Companies looking to develop clean technologies.
• Companies considering sustainable development and
  marketing. (Donald Fuller)
• marketing plans should be constructed so that
  they are compatible with ecosystems.
• Marketing plans should be constructed so that
  they consider social impacts
• Backward channels of distribution are increasing
  in importance

12
Disposition Chains

• Simple Reuse
• Occurs when a product is reused by the consumer
  for its original purpose or for a different
  purpose
• Secondhand Reuse (lateral recycling)
• Occurs when a product is given away as a gift or
  through inheritance to friends, family or
  strangers or sold to another household or traded
  for another product
• Secondhand Trade
• Takes place when ownership for the used products
  is first transferred to an intermediary before
  distribution to new users.
• Resource Recovery (recycling)
• Takes place when the product or its parts are
  used as a secondary resource in the production of
  new products.

13
Re-manufacturing
http//www.sorbilite.com/Home.php
14
Disposition Segmentation and Psychographic
Factors

• Some people may be more inclined to recycle good
  than others
• Green segments
• In general, we are a throw away society
• However, a segment of the market views one
  persons trash as another persons treasure
• Challenge for marketers it to make green needs
  more salient
• Prisoners dilemma everyone benefits if all
  comply but if one person doesnt comply, his/her
  immediate benefits may outweigh the general good

15
Topic Takeaways

• Businesses need to be concerned with the
  by-products of their production process, if for
  no other reason consumers care
• Solutions to consumption and over-consumption
  problems will have to be developed by considering
  the joint concerns of business, policy makers,
  society, and individual consumers
• Disposition is a process (as opposed to an
  event), that (1) occurs in a variety of ways and
  (2) is affected by product, situation, and person
  factors
• The entire value chain and biography of products
  should be examined for business opportunities and
  environmental and societal benefits