{"id":13,"date":"2005-02-02T14:34:17","date_gmt":"2005-02-02T18:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/02\/02\/product-service-systems\/"},"modified":"2005-02-02T14:34:17","modified_gmt":"2005-02-02T18:34:17","slug":"product-service-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/02\/product-service-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Product Service Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I was delighted to discover today the TreeHugger<\/a> blog for green hipsters:<\/p>\n

TreeHugger
\nis the definitive, modern yet green lifestyle filter. It will help you
\nimprove your course, yet still maintain your aesthetic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among the concepts they push is the “Product Service Systems,” that is, the transformation of a product into a service. Zipcar<\/a>
\nis the quintissential PSS, turning consumers from car-purchasers into
\ncar-micro-renters. It’s a business model that makes eminent sense
\n(consider the software industry from Open Source workshops to Microsoft
\nitself), though how “green” it is depends on the product\/service itself.<\/p>\n

For
\nexample, Zipcar enables more consumers to purchase fewer cars, which
\narguably reduces the demand for car manufacture. According to Zipcar,
\ncustomers end up driving less than they would have if they owned their
\nown cars — probably because the incentive system changes from trying
\nto maximize returns from a fixed investment (a purchased car) to
\nmiminizing a variable cost (car rental). The most important side effect
\nof this incentive change is that consumers begin internalizing the
\nexternal costs of driving, e.g. they see driving as exacting a cost
\neach time they drive, not just when they go to the gas station. (Do
\npeople really cut down on driving when gas prices go up? Perhaps not as
\nmuch as we’d like when you consider that the full costs of gasoline usage<\/a>
\nis not priced into the pump). Rather than impose those externalities on
\nconsumers via unpopular taxes, Zipcar does it through the extraction of
\nprofits — a win for environmentalists, a win for the company, and for
\nus at least, a win for the consumer.<\/p>\n

I don’t know that all PSS’s are environmentally superior to
\ntheir purchase alternatives. Some of the factors one might have to
\nweigh would be balancing the environmental costs of manufacture and
\ndelivery to those of the rental transaction and service delivery. For
\nexample, does Ebay<\/a> have a net
\npositive effect on the environment (through the recycling of products
\nthat obviates the need for new manufacture) or a net negative effect
\n(through billions of micro-transactions that necessitate door-to-door
\ndeliveries on trucks)? A positive side effectfor those of us concerned
\nabout economic fairness of shifting from product- to service-delivery
\nis that most service delivery is more labor-intensive than product
\nmanufacture, which means that profits are necessarily distributed more
\nwidely across low- and medium-skill workers rather than concentrated
\namong high-skill workers and productivity-boosters like robots.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was delighted to discover today the TreeHugger blog for green hipsters: TreeHugger is the definitive, modern yet green lifestyle filter. It will help you improve your course, yet still maintain your aesthetic. Among the concepts they push is the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}