Enabling Consumers to Adopt Reusable Packaging Systems in FMCG Products: An Application of the Behavior Change Wheel and Customer Journey Mapping
Author
Llamoca Valencia, Silvia Gabriela
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Llamoca Valencia, Silvia Gabriela. 2024. Enabling Consumers to Adopt Reusable Packaging Systems in FMCG Products: An Application of the Behavior Change Wheel and Customer Journey Mapping. Master's thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.Abstract
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products contribute to plastic waste since they are designed for single use and disposal, and reusable packaging is part of the solution to eliminate plastic waste pollution (EMF, 2019). Reusable packaging systems (RPS) can help reduce single-use packaging and transition to circular consumption, but their success depends on new business models and innovations. Incumbent and challenger companies have different approaches to implementing RPS due to their size, operations reach, ability to embed sustainability in their business models, and agility to change to incorporate circularity. However, a common challenge is that low consumer adoption of reusable packaging is a key barrier for companies to offer more RPS.How are businesses helping consumers adopt sustainable consumption behaviors such as RPS? Most research has focused on consumers’ barriers to adopting RPS and on applying information and technology tools to support consumer purchasing decisions. However, it remains unclear how businesses can improve the overall customer experience of RPS, which is key to enabling reuse behaviors, increasing consumer demand, and achieving scalability. A key aim of this thesis was to examine and highlight the ways FMCG businesses incorporated effective interventions in the customer journey to allow consumers to adopt reusable packaging and contribute to reducing plastic pollution.
My research compared how incumbent and challenger companies influence consumer behavior in their customer journey design. For the sample, I selected 10 incumbent and 10 challenger RPS products sold online in the UK. The reuse models in scope are refill at home, return from home, and return on the go, as those can be purchased online. This research applied a novel approach that involved creating a scorecard using a combination of customer journey mapping (CJM) and the behavior change wheel (BCW) framework, which was used to evaluate how companies enable consumers to switch to their RPS products.
The scorecard results showed that RPS products from challenger companies performed better than RPS from incumbent companies. The products were then evaluated according to five factors that influence RPS consumer engagement: Understanding of RPS benefits, convenience, affordability, hygiene, and infrastructure accessibility. Most products addressed the understanding of the RPS benefits and convenience. However, gaps in the CJM included affordability, hygiene, and infrastructure accessibility. Additionally, findings showed that companies mainly applied RPS interventions in the pre-purchase and purchase stages of the customer journey. In contrast, fewer interventions were used in the post-purchase stage, which could hinder consistent RPS product adoption. Regarding the BCW, results show that not all the COM-B components of capability, opportunity, and motivation are addressed in the sample products through the interventions found in the CJM and surprisingly, motivation was the least addressed area. Finally, across the 35 interventions identified in the CJM, the most addressed intervention functions are education (30%), enablement (22%) and persuasion (15%).
This thesis concludes with a guideline for companies to evaluate their RPS offerings and identify improvement areas. The results of this work contribute to research on the effective implementation and scalability of RPS in the transition to a circular economy and can help businesses identify how to improve the customer journey design.
Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37378542
Collections
- DCE Theses and Dissertations [1331]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)