Browsing by Author "Ylipoti, Kerttu-Maaria"

Take away food has increased in popularity in the past years. However, there are not many cardboard-based take away packaging options for restauranteurs. Plastic materials such as expanded polystyrene are most commonly used for take away packaging, but the single-use plastics directive by the European Commission has added polystyrene as one of the materials to be banned by 2021. Additionally, consumers are also becoming more educated on material sustainability, which brings added pressure and opportunity for developing new alternatives to the market. This case study implemented customer-dominant logic (CDL) to the design process of a cardboard-based take away package. In CDL, value-creation is perceived as a personal, subjective and holistic process, where the customer is in the center of the value formation process. The aim was to create a CDL based design framework and test whether it resulted in a cardboard-based take away package which created value for the consumer. The case study also aimed to uncover the factors of take away packaging which contributed to the value creation for customers. The results were collected through three consumer studies, which used qualitative methods such as responsive interviews and the Value Toolkit®. It was concluded that cardboard as a material was seen as renewable and easy-to-recycle. The cardboard-based package was successfully designed, as it was rated highest in comparison to a polystyrene-based package and a compostable bagasse package in the final consumer study. It was discovered that out of the four value types: performance, experience, status value, and responsibility, consumers thought performance was the most important in take away packaging. The CDL based framework for package design was successful. The framework can further be studied with collateral case studies, where one design team uses the CDL based framework and the other uses a more traditional approach to design.