Have you ever wondered why consumers tend to replace their electronic devices instead of repairing them? Are you motivated to delve into the psychological processes underlying consumers’ decisions regarding the repair (or not) of their owned products? Are you enthusiastic about developing and empirically testing innovative (marketing) ways to motivate consumers towards repair? If so, then we have the perfect opportunity for you! The
Marketing and Consumer Behaviour group of Wageningen University is looking for an enthusiastic and ambitious PhD candidate to fulfil an essential position in the NWO funded project “Tackling fixophobia: Improving repair practices for consumer electronics”. The project aims to develop a circular economy for consumer electronics.
In today’s linear economy, the rapid replacement of consumer electronics leads to CO2-emissions, resource scarcity, e-waste and pollution, thereby providing important environmental and societal challenges. Extending the lifetimes of consumer electronics is essential to tackle these challenges. A repair economy in which all value chain actors (incl. consumers) adopt repair practices can lead to such extended product lifetimes. Yet, currently all relevant actors experience barriers that withhold them from trusting, accepting, and adopting repair practices, leading to ‘Fixophobia’.
In general, the “Tackling Fixophobia” project aims to provide the much-needed scientific theories, societal tools, and repair system innovations to encourage a multi-actor system change and enhance trust, acceptance and adoption of repair practices for consumer electronics. To achieve societal impact, we collaborate intensely with a unique consortium, including all actors in the consumer electronics value chain: Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), (design) consultancies, retail, repair organisations, consumer organisations, network/trade organisations, and waste organisation. Three PhD students will work on this project (for more information, see:
NWO-KIC Circular Economy).
In the current PhD position, you will work together with all project partners, and investigate the consumer perspective. Your responsibility will be to examine the factors that influence consumers’ repair behaviour, to develop a taxonomy of marketing and service innovations for repair, and to develop interventions that stimulate consumers to engage in repair practices. This will result in the development of a marketing repair tool and a thorough understanding of the consumer perspective. Moreover, in the final project you will intensively collaborate with the design (TU Delft), value chain (University of Maastricht) and law partners (Erasmus University) to together develop an integrated framework on repair. Interdisciplinary research is thus a valuable part of the project.
You will work here The Marketing and Consumer Behaviour group is one of the leading research and teaching groups in the fields of marketing (research) and consumer behavior related to food, sustainability, and agribusiness. The research is led by Dr. Ilona de Hooge. You will be co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Hans van Trijp and Prof. Dr. Ruth Mugge (Delft University).
As a PhD candidate, you will be enrolled in the Wageningen University Graduate School (WASS). The Graduate school provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff, and a mentor. You will also participate in a Doctorate Education Programme, in which you further develop your research, teaching, and interdisciplinary skills.