Repair service convenience in a circular economy: The perspective of customers and repair companies

Using repair services instead of new purchases creates local added value and contributes to a circular economy. The main aim of this research was to characterize repair service convenience for customers and to investigate ways to increase convenience to make repairs more attractive for customers, as the construct service convenience has neither been used nor adapted to a repair context until now. For this purpose, focus group interviews with potential customers of repair companies and interactive workshops with repair companies were conducted in the region of Styria (Austria). Findings state that a variety of factors like lack of information regarding repair services and product repairability, inconvenient store hours, or long waits reduce repair service convenience. However, due to skilled labor shortage, long delivery times of spare parts, or lacking financial resources for advertisements, repair companies can only partially improve convenience. Considering that, interventions from different actors, for example, the local government are needed as they can increase convenience by organizing awareness/information events, repair networks, or central repair-points. Hence, this study highlights once more the necessity to collaborate with different stakeholders (including customers, repair companies, local initiatives, and governments) to successfully transform the linear economy to a circular economy.