Expected product lifetimes of consumer durables: Do product lifetimes meet consumers' expectations?

Product lifetimes represents a relevant topic of discussion particularly for the reduction of environmental impacts by product longevity towards establishing a circular economy. It has been pointed out that actual lifetimes may not necessarily meet consumer’ expectations. The integration of the two perspectives, i.e. actual and expected product lifetimes, should prove significant in informing research, industry and policy makers with the objective of tackling the challenge of optimizing product lifetimes. The present study intended to organize the definitions of expected product lifetimes from consumer perspectives. Three different types of expected lifetimes are defined: intended lifetime, ideal lifetime, and predicted lifetime. Measuring the expected product lifetimes by a clear distinction of these different definitions is useful for identifying the factors affecting the differences between actual product lifetimes and consumers’ expectations. The study also investigated consumers’ expectations on product lifetimes of consumer durables goods according to the above-defined three different expected lifetimes. The calculated average “intended lifetime” and “ideal lifetime” tended to be longer than the “predicted lifetime.” In addition, regardless of the definitions, the answered expected lifetimes were longer than the estimated actual lifetimes, suggesting the current actual lifetimes of consumer durables do not meet consumers’ expectations.