Consumer vulnerability and complaint handling: Challenges, opportunities and dispute system design

Brennan, Carol; Sourdin, Tania; Williams, Jane; Burstyner, Naomi; Gill, Chris

doi:10.1111/ijcs.12377

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…Authorities can contribute with consumer rights legislation, where the right to make a complaint and the right for informed choices are followed up (Brennan et al 2017). This will ensure that it will be easier to find and select good products, and to complain about the poor ones.…”

Section: Best Practice Garment Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing environmental impacts from garments through best practice garment use and care, using the example of a Merino wool sweater

Wiedemann¹,

Biggs²,

Nguyen³

et al. 2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose Garment production and use generate substantial environmental impacts, and the care and use are key determinants of cradle-to-grave impacts. The present study investigated the potential to reduce environmental impacts by applying best practices for garment care combined with increased garment use. A wool sweater is used as an example because wool garments have particular attributes that favour reduced environmental impacts in the use phase. Methods A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to compare six plausible best and worst-case practice scenarios for use and care of a wool sweater, relative to current practices. These focussed on options available to consumers to reduce impacts, including reduced washing frequency, use of more efficient washing machines, reduced use of machine clothing dryers, garment reuse by multiple users, and increasing number of garment wears before disposal. A sixth scenario combined all options. Worst practices took the worst plausible alternative for each option investigated. Impacts were reported per wear in Western Europe for climate change, fossil energy demand, water stress and freshwater consumption. Results and discussion Washing less frequently reduced impacts by between 4 and 20%, while using more efficient washing machines at capacity reduced impacts by 1 to 6%, depending on the impact category. Reduced use of machine dryer reduced impacts by < 5% across all indicators. Reusing garments by multiple users increased life span and reduced impacts by 25–28% across all indicators. Increasing wears from 109 to 400 per garment lifespan had the largest effect, decreasing impacts by 60% to 68% depending on the impact category. Best practice care, where garment use was maximised and care practices focussed on the minimum practical requirements, resulted in a ~ 75% reduction in impacts across all indicators. Unsurprisingly, worst-case scenarios increased impacts dramatically: using the garment once before disposal increased GHG impacts over 100 times. Conclusions Wool sweaters have potential for long life and low environmental impact in use, but there are substantial differences between the best, current and worst-case scenarios. Detailed information about garment care and lifespans is needed to understand and reduce environmental impacts. Opportunities exist for consumers to rapidly and dramatically reduce these impacts. The fashion industry can facilitate this through garment design and marketing that promotes and enables long wear life and minimal care.

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Section: Best Practice Garment Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing environmental impacts from garments through best practice garment use and care, using the example of a Merino wool sweater

Wiedemann¹,

Biggs²,

Nguyen³

et al. 2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The current pandemic can be perceived as an adverse setting that can make some people vulnerable and/or resilient, affecting their purchase decision making. According to Brennan et al (2017), vulnerability is more about the situation that people encounter than about the people themselves. This suggests that an individual might feel vulnerable at any point in time, including while making purchases during the pandemic.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Purchase experience during the COVID‐19 pandemic and social cognitive theory: The relevance of consumer vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability for purchase satisfaction and repurchase

Milaković

2021

Int J Consumer Studies

176

173

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This study explores consumer behavior during the pandemic through the lens of social cognitive theory (SCT). Using the SCT framework and assessing the pandemic as an environmental set, this study strives to fill the gaps in the underexplored impacts of the personal processes of consumer vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability on the behavioral processes of purchase satisfaction and repurchase. The research results show that consumers are self‐efficacious to a degree when it comes to purchase decision making in the context of pandemics. Vulnerability and resilience directly influence the purchase satisfaction and indirectly influence the repurchase intention via satisfaction. Furthermore, purchase satisfaction positively affects the repurchase intention. In addition, research results show that consumer adaptability to online shopping moderates the relationship between consumer resilience and purchase satisfaction. These findings have practical implications in terms of marketers’ communication strategy development.

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“…Brennan, Sourdin, Williams, Burstyner, and Gill () note that vulnerable consumers tend not to complain, and that there is a deep pool of problems that do not generate complaints due to consumer vulnerabilities. Their suggested solution is simplified complaint handling systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trust and the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias in peer‐to‐peer platform markets

Berg¹,

Slettemeås²,

Kjørstad

et al. 2020

Int J Consumer Studies

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This paper addresses peer‐to‐peer (P2P) digital platform markets, often associated with the “sharing economy” or the “collaborative economy”. Such digital platforms, facilitating new purchasing channels for consumers by matching P2P supply and demand, can be considered new market places challenging the conventional markets. How are P2P platform markets evaluated by the consumers? Based on a comprehensive survey‐data material, five different P2P service markets are considered by peer buyers and the results compared to consumers’ evaluations from similar conventional service markets according to trust, comparability and consumers’ satisfaction with the transactions. Comparability seems to be one advantage for the platform markets, while trust could become a problem. Conditions for trust in P2P platform markets is particularly interesting to study because contrary to conventional markets P2P transactions cannot rely on governmental laws, regulations and security net. This trust problem has been solved by a trust‐generating rate and review system. Our data material, however, distinguishes a mechanism that we have coined as the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias. More precisely, people do not like to complain, hence buyers of P2P services often hesitate to give negative ratings when they are discontent with a service or a supplier. Therefore, positive ratings become overestimated. If consumers recognize this bias, ratings and reviews will lose credibility and no longer be considered trustworthy. Eventually, this may threaten the well‐functioning of P2P markets.

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Consumer vulnerability and complaint handling: Challenges, opportunities and dispute system design

Cited by 26 publications

References 31 publications

Reducing environmental impacts from garments through best practice garment use and care, using the example of a Merino wool sweater

Reducing environmental impacts from garments through best practice garment use and care, using the example of a Merino wool sweater

Purchase experience during the COVID‐19 pandemic and social cognitive theory: The relevance of consumer vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability for purchase satisfaction and repurchase

Trust and the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias in peer‐to‐peer platform markets

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