New Trends in Consumption in Poland as Shown by the Example of a Freeshop Concept

Abstract

Current socioeconomic and environmental problems require radical solutions, including applying the circular economy and a zero-waste concept to customer behavior. One such solution is the concept of freeshops. A freeshop is a place where one can leave things one does not need and take useful items. The main purpose of this concept is to reuse things and thus prevent overproduction. The article is based on a survey carried out among students of the University of Gdańsk (n = 381). An affinity analysis was used to evaluate the data. The main aim of the paper is to discover a major set of factors that influence consumers choosing freeshops’ offer. In general, there were two groups of factors: economic (i.e., saving money) and connected with environmental protection (e.g., recycling). The primary result is that economic factors are more important for surveyed students than those related to environmental protection.

A New Model of Pro-Quality Decision Making in Terms of Products’ Improvement Considering Customer Requirements

“…Therefore, it is important that this criterion is considered among the others. After a review of the literature, e.g., according to authors of studies [33,[35][36][37], it is crucial to include the criterion of impact on the natural environment (which refers to the negative impact on the natural environment, e.g., due to the materials used for its production, packaging, or the method of degradation/lifetime). This is due to the global need to care for the natural environment, which is weakened by climate change and further exacerbated by waste and a competitive production environment.…”

“…. , k; the proportion of the weight of i-th and j-th criterion from a square matrix of order n × n, where n-number of criteria, is determined as a domination matrix (2) [37,46]:…”

“…Studies were created in which the selection of a product or predicting the direction of improvement would mainly take into account individual customer requirements and expert opinion [6,31], real parameters of product criteria [32][33][34], criterion of impact on natural environmental [33,[35][36][37], or price of purchase [4,6,[38][39][40]. Furthermore, MCDM (multiple-criteria decision methods) were also used, i.e., DEMATEL method, EWM method, AHP method, fuzzy AHP method, fuzzy VIKOR, and TOPSIS method.…”

“…These techniques are as follows: brainstorming (BM) [41], SMARTER method [42], rule 7 ± 2 [31,33,43], a questionnaire with the Likert scale [44], AHP method [45][46][47], and PROMETHEE II method [48,49]. The analysis was also supported by the actual purchase price of the product in a matrix data analysis dedicated to this model [6,37].…”

“…As a result, a product-selection ranking is created, which concerns the quality of products according to the fulfilment of customer expectations. The qualitative price analysis is realized by using matrix data analysis [37], which shows which product is the most favorable for quality, impact on the environment, and price of purchase.…”