Carousel of Consumption: design and meaning of retail spaces as platforms for value co-creation in circular fashion systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The fashion industry has embraced the circular economy (CE) as a solution to interconnected problems of waste, pollution and resource scarcity. This research starts to identify and interrogate varied assumptions implicit in CE business models by investigating how these may play out in practice in fashion retail service scenarios. CE literature is largely focused on issues of production, describing design for new materials, products, recycling technologies and business models. Most approaches proposed so far heavily rely on customer behaviour change (Lofthouse & Prendeville, 2018; Kuzmina et al, 2018; Hobson, 2016), failing to consider their complex role as participating agents in consumption systems. Investigations into customer behaviour are often tightly focused on interactions with products, ignoring the dominant socio-cultural contexts which exert deep influence on expressions of identity, symbolic meaning, acquisition and decision-making. Developed from the industrial design and management literature, the CE conceptualisation is grounded in inferences from neoclassical economic and strategic management theory. Unfortunately, these foundations are often implied and therefore remain unarticulated. An explicit theoretical model which describes consumer-producer interactions and value creation or maintenance in the CE is lacking. This research presents initial findings from a critical discourse analysis of the literature on circular business models (CBMs). The analysis examines the rhetoric of CE literature to develop "a detailed description, explanation and critique of the ways dominant discourses (indirectly) influence such socially shared knowledge, attitudes and ideologies, namely through their role in the manufacture of concrete models" (Van Dijk, 1993). Further, it aims to identify and articulate assumptions inherent in the conceptualisation of CBMs, particularly in relation to customer participation in value co-creation. In doing so, the author aims to make explicit the unarticulated theoretical assumptions of the CE concept, a crucial first step in determining their coherence, validity and viability. The author adopts the lens of service-dominant logic to develop critical discussion of value creation theory in relation to the CE. S-D logic offers an understanding of market value which goes beyond utility and exchange to include phenomenological, subjective meaning (Vargo & Lusch, 2015). This lens acknowledges the role of branding and cultural influences on customer behaviour, which are of particular importance in fashion. Emphasising subjective meaning-making enables further understanding of the cultural process of "waste-making", or voluntary value destruction performed by the customer (Crocker, 2016). A pilot exercise will be conducted with Masters design students, in which implicit assumptions of CBMs are extrapolated to construct hypothetical scenarios for CE retail fashion customer experience. By going from theory to practice, we begin to evaluate their suitability to enable value co-creation throughout the customer journey. Initial qualitative data is discussed in terms of how the proposed scenarios create barriers or opportunities for customer participation. Scenarios are further developed and form part of a curated exhibition of circular concepts for public display. Members of the public will be invited to participate in the speculative customer journeys and express their thoughts and reactions. This will form the main qualitative data collection. The research aims to falsify or validate the identified assumptions or inferences about the market viability of the models, customer acceptance and value creation inherent in the CE discourse and conceptualisation of CBMs.