The Tangible Environmental Impacts of Branding

From purchase preferences through willingness to pay, it is well established that intangible product qualities such as brand name, appearance, or style greatly affect the way consumers evaluate products and the utility they... [ view full abstract ]

From purchase preferences through willingness to pay, it is well established that intangible product qualities such as brand name, appearance, or style greatly affect the way consumers evaluate products and the utility they can provide. Although intangibles are known to affect consumption, they are mostly absent from research in sustainable production and consumption. Relying on a unique database of over 300,000 sales of used smartphones online, we demonstrate that device lifespans are not uniform but vary according to phone features and qualities. Specifically, we find that product intangibles (e.g. Brand name) have a significant impact on depreciation and service life duration of smartphones. Furthermore, we find that intangibles might be of greater importance for extending the useful lifespan of smartphones compared to functional features such as memory size or the ability to repair and upgrade a device. Augmenting our results with previously published life cycle assessment reports, we demonstrate a novel approach for quantifying the tangible environmental costs associated with products’ intangible qualities.