Product Subjective Sustainability: Analysis of the Japanese Users’ Kansei Evolutions over their Short/Long-lived Products’ Lifetimes

  • Seyed Javad Zafarmand
  • Fumio Terauchi
  • Hiroyuki Aoki

Abstract

Focusing on the subjective side of product sustainability and considering the lack of a wide expression to encompass product subjective issues that contribute to products’ longevity with regard to sustainability values, the present work proposes the concept of Product Subjective Sustainability (PSjS) to particularly indicate ‘the emotional, affective and/or aesthetical capability of a product to satisfyingly and pleasantly last during its expected long/short lifetime’. Aiming to expand this concept experientially by using the Kansei Engineering approach, this paper presents the process and results of an analytical study on the evolution of Japanese users’ Kansei toward their short/long-lived product during its entire lifetime. The specified short and long lived product types for this analytical study are, respectively, mobile phone, private passenger car and Japanese handicraft or traditional furniture. As the main outcome of this analysis, the Kansei structures and the trends of PSjS are drawn and compared between these products.

Keywords

product longevity psychological lifetime mobile phone passenger car handicraft 

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Seyed Javad Zafarmand
    • 1
  • Fumio Terauchi
    • 2
  • Hiroyuki Aoki
    • 2
  1. 1.Faculty of Art and ArchitectureShiraz UniversityShirazIran
  2. 2.Deign Science Div, Graduate School of EngineeringChiba UniversityChibaJapan

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