Data Gathering Sources

As section 3.2 implies, the data scope definition suggests sourcing data from the customer or partnering firms of the case firms to explore the value perspective of customers authentically. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the roles of involved partners and customers, the researcher created a categorization of customers that is independent of the case firms’ business models, for easier data gathering purposes. The potential customer roles corresponding to business models in circular economy are elaborated in Table 04.

Table 04. Customer roles involved with business models in circular economy

Business model Customer roles involved

Renovate and Resell Donor/seller of used material/products Buyer of secondhand/ reconditioned products Chooser of alternative sustainable solutions Surplus selling platforms Donor/seller of surplus

Buyer of surplus

Waste management services Waste management service integrator Producing alternative sustainable solutions Chooser of alternative sustainable solutions

As shown in the table, each business model conveys different roles to customers involved in their circular economy operations. The business models renovate and resell and surplus selling platforms share common characteristics among their customers. Specifically, in both categories, there exists a donor or a seller on one hand, and a buyer on the other hand. The first kind is alternatively defined as partners in the business context. However, the researcher created two categories by merging the customer roles with similar natures of involvement. Therefore, the donors or sellers were put to one category and the buyers to another. In contrast, the waste management service providers and the alternative sustainable solution producers possess only one kind of customer role on the receiving side of the service or the product. As a result, the customer categories turned out as;

Customer role 1. Donor/seller of used material/products/surplus Customer role 2. Buyer of secondhand/ reconditioned/surplus Customer role 3. Waste management service integrator Customer role 4. Chooser of alternative sustainable solutions

Additionally, compared with the business market in general, circular economy businesses involve with consumers more often, due to the closed-loop nature of certain business models such as renovate and resell and surplus selling platforms. Hence, the research was naturally extended to hear the consumer voice in applicable customer categories of donor/seller of used material/products/surplus and buyer of secondhand/ reconditioned/ surplus. Another reason to study the consumer market is the possibility of cross-analysis of the data shared by the partners with the consumers’ data. Consequently, the list of customer firms and consumers to approach, with the details of their market type, industry and the category are further demonstrated in Table 05. Table 05. Interviewed customer details and customer identifiers for the research

Case Customer market Customer Industry Customer identifier Customer category

ResQ Club Business market Grocery Customer 1 Category 1

Business market Foodservice Customer 2 Category 1

Consumer market N/A Customer 3 Category 2

Consumer market N/A Customer 4 Category 2

Consumer market N/A Customer 5 Category 2

Netlet Oy Ab Business market Construction Customer 6 Category 1

Consumer market N/A Customer 7 Category 2

Fluid Intelligence Oy Business market Chemical production Customer 8 Category 3

Verso Food Oy Business market Grocery trade Customer 9 Category 4

Gold and Green® Business market Grocery trade Customer 10 Category 4

The customers were picked purposefully, overlooking the industries that the customer firms belong to, as advised by Eisenhardt (1989) for theory generation. Moreover, the identities of the customers were decided to keep enclosed, hence alternative aliasing identifiers were assigned to each customer as further illustrated in the table.

In the case of ResQ Club, the researcher conducted five interviews, two partnering firms and three consumers. The partnering firms were carefully sampled to individually represent grocery industry and foodservice industry (i.e. restaurants). Subsequently, one customer was the owner of a grocery store in a leading grocery store chain and the other customer, the owner of a café restaurant in a café restaurant chain, which promotes healthy food consumption. The customers are identified as Customer 1 and Customer 2 respectively, for this research purpose. The consumers that were interviewed were

picked from two geographical areas, to add more fairness to consumer case sampling. The consumers possess the identifiers Customer 3, Customer 4 and Customer 5 as illustrated in the table.

In the Netlet Oy Ab case, the researcher interviewed one partner, which is a construction company that gives away surplus from their construction sites. The partner is named as Customer 6 for this research. Moreover, a private customer (consumer), who buys construction surplus from the online selling platform was also interviewed. In this report, the consumer is known as Customer 7.

Customer 8 was an oil waste management service integrator of Fluid Intelligence Oy. The customer operates in chemical production industry and produces various gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen for industrial, healthcare and safety purposes. The interview was conducted in the production site with the site’s sole Technical and Development Manager. Additionally, the researcher found the opportunity to observe the sensor-equipment that Fluid Intelligence had installed for monitoring the oil in operation, on heavy compressors used for customer’s gas production. Fluid Intelligence monitors and analyzes the flowing oil condition and in case of anomalies detected, the site manager is alerted by communication through the phone.

The researcher was able to access a Verso Food customer in grocery trade industry and explore what values the customer sees in Verso Food Oy product offerings. The customer is a rewarding sustainable business in the world ranking, hence adds a high credit to this research by their contribution. As a grocery trader, the customer accepts products to be sold on the shelves of their grocery chain and claims to work together with the suppliers in product innovation, marketing, logistics, and sales. For this research, the customer is named Customer 9. Furthermore, the same customer was interviewed for the case of Gold and Green® as well. However, for data separation purposes, the researcher named the customer with another alias as Customer 10.