ABSTRACT
When I first started teaching marketing, Vance Packard's (1960) criticisms of planned obsolescence were widely discussed by students and faculty. The prevailing view was that it was unethical to design products that would wear out “prematurely” (i.e., have useful lives that were well below customer expectations), particularly if they were costly to replace. Today, the mounting numbers of functioning durable goods ending up in landfills have led to renewed criticism of product obsolescence. Sources indicate that in North America over 100 million cell phones and 300 million personal computers are discarded each year, and only 20,000 televisions are refurbished each year while 20 million are sold, resulting in tremendous environmental damage from lead, mercury, and toxic glass (cf. Boland 2001; Slade 2006). Additionally, when electronics are recycled, 50–80 percent are shipped to third-world nations where workers use dangerous, primitive processes for extracting recyclable materials, often exposing themselves to toxic gases in the process (Associated Press 2007). So, while advances in technology and increasingly skillful industrial design have enabled firms to develop innovative products in virtually every durable goods category, the nature of the materials that are often required and the rapid pace of product upgrading have resulted in negative environmental consequences for consumers and society (cf. Calcott and Walls 2005).
