| Abstract |
Rapid development and innovation in science and technology have resulted in shorter product life-cycle, especially in technology-based commodities like mobile phones and computers. Mounting wastes from such products have received increasing attentions from government, society, as well as industries for sustainability concerns. Numerous studies on remanufacturing have been found on durable goods, but only a few focusing on short life-cycle products. Even though several studies implied that successful remanufacturing requires products to have long useful life and stable technology, there are other findings that support remanufacturing of short lifecycle products. It is our intention to investigate remanufacturing of short life-cycle product. A literature review is conducted to study the pros and cons, life-cycle implication, and remanufacturing aspects of short life-cycle products. Then we propose a framework that can be used to decide and plan the remanufacturing system. Furthermore, we conduct a survey to obtain descriptive analysis about the market potential for remanufactured short life-cycle products. The factors investigated are existence of demand, customer's willingness to pay (WTP), and existence of green segment. The survey results show that low-end customers are the potential market segment for short life-cycle remanufactured product, because they have the highest preference toward remanufacturing and 95% of them chose remanufactured product when the price is less than 40% of new product. It is also shown that green segment exists since 42%, 65%, and 47% of customers from high-end, low-end, and student subgroup respectively consider buying remanufactured products over new ones driven by their concern for the environment. |