Embedding the Circular Economy paradigm into business, strategy and operations - Empirical findings on both the industry's and consumers' perspective

Scholars and practitioners have documented how the CE paradigm is giving birth to entirely new and very innovative business models (Bocken et al., 2014). Sharing platforms, remanufacturing, modular design and circular supplies are radical and crucial levers that could profoundly change the current economic system and generate circular loops (Esposito et al., 2018). These radical changes require both industries and consumers to adopt more circular business models and more circular consumption behavior, respectively. However, a more widespread and comprehensive change in the economy, i.e. the entire economy becoming circular, cannot rely only on radical innovations (Lacy and Rutqvist, 2015), which might be beyond the reach of most companies (especially SMEs). Similarly, effective leverages to push consumers towards more circular choice have to be found and experimented. This work aims at analyzing both these key perspectives: industries’ and consumers’ ones. First, a study conducted on Italian manufacturing companies shows the actual level of circular economy’s principles implementation and identifies the most effective drivers for pushing the transition. Second, an in depth literature review on drivers to green and to circular consumption, defines a new separate type of product, the “circular product” and classifies which of the traditional drivers to green consumption can work also for “circular consumption”. Third, some experiments show WTP for “circular clothes”, i.e. second-hand and recycled clothing, offering some insights on the best strategy to market them through the provision of information on their environmental performance.