In light of the Hamon law, warranties were put at the forefront of the topic of sustainable production and planned obsolescence. However, despite having said warranties upon purchases, more often than not consumers end up not using them when their item breaks and prefer buying a new product as replacement.

The main explanation for this behaviour, is the lack of easy storage. Because warranties are often printed documents people tend to lose them, forget where they placed them or simply fail to remember that they exist. This problem caught are attention and is the main driver for our concept :

Warrant-e is a free mobile application that stores all the consumers’ product warranties and provides a user-review platform where said products are rated for sustainability to encourage more informed purchases.

How does it work?

After downloading the free application and upon first use, users will be asked to create their profiles. They will need to answer a few questions to determine the type of consumer they are (do they use their products a lot? are they careful with their products? do they protect their products etc.). Once the profile is created users can start uploading their warranties. To do so they will be required to take a photo of the warranty with their phone.

In addition to saving the photo, the application uses OCR text recognition to guide consumers through creating their warranty entry. Users will need to select the category they want their product to be stored under (Home appliances, Technology, Sport/Leisure etc.). To finish, the users will be asked to confirm their entry.

What distinguishes Warrant-e is that it offers more functionalities to enjoy than simply the storing of warranties. The application contains several extra features including :

The application is offered for free download to encourage people to use it and not have price be an obstacle. This gives the application significantly more reach potential. However, Warrant-e is not a non-profit business founded by the government. In order to maintain our activity, we will sell the data collected (either raw or analyzed) through the application to firms in the consumer goods industry. Our application enables us to collect a variety of data that can be of great interest to leading companies such as, consumer opinion of brands related to their age, sex and consumer type and product breaks are also inventoried. Firms could also use the data to see how they fair against their competitors (Why did a consumer decide to purchase a Samsung phone after his iPhone broke ? Because the batterie lasts longer and the screen doesn’t break easily etc.) in order to improve their products.

You can take a look at this page</li> to see what it looks like !

Expected Positive Impacts

We believe this mobile application, in addition to raising awareness in regards to planned obsolescence, will bring about several benefits for both consumers and producers. The first one being monetary. By using Warrant-e, consumers are going to be able to save more money as they will be notified when their warranties are about to expire and will be informed on their rights regarding repairs. As such, they will have more incentive to keep owned products instead of buying to replace or renew.

We believe that gaining awareness on rights and information will lead to a better understanding of how to optimize repairs and in the long run reduce e-waste. Secondly, our solution takes into consideration the well-being of our clients. Thanks to a thorough analysis of the customer experience of Warrant-e and an intuitive interface, users will now be able to avoid the general hassles and problems of warranties such as accessing documents as easily as possible whilst saving time. In addition to that, our proposal takes into account the environmental issues and challenges we face today. Given that Warrant-e is a digital mobile application, this means that our users will be able to go paperless.

Also, assuming the application proves to be successful, it could lead, in the long run, to companies opting for digital copies instead of paper form and them sending the copies directly to the app. Furthermore, we believe that Warrant-e will give rise to a more responsible consumption and production of goods, which in turn will reduce technological waste. Finally, we suspect our application will force companies to increase the duration of their warranties in order to remain competitive, which could then result in longer product life expectancy.

In addition to these consumer benefits, producers will also be able to gain knowledge from the user-generated feedback collected through the application. Warrant-e will sell data resources to companies that will in turn be able to adapt their offers and better cater to the needs of consumers. With sustainable production becoming a central topic, firms need to start becoming more transparent  regarding the life cycle of their products. Warrant-e can help increase the brand image of companies that are actively improving the quality and duration of said products. Because we include the possibility to purchase products, companies can also benefit from high conversion rates from the application it is therefore in their best interest to support it.

Major Risks and Actions to Reduce them

The team has evaluated several problems which will need to be addressed to ensure the success of our application.

First of all, we fear that companies will welcome Warrant-e with hostility and more specifically, decide to boycott the application. In order to remedy this predicament, it is crucial to establish proper partnerships with leading companies by clarifying the “what’s in it for them?” and emphasizing the potential use of collected data : provided we have the user’s consent to ensure transparency, our extensive database will enable us to carry out analyses and ultimately produce reports which could be highly beneficial for these companies. Indeed, these sold reports, or raw data could give them indications regarding their own products. For instance, they will have access to the listing of their most recommended products, customer satisfaction etc. We believe these tools could serve as major strategic insights for these companies.

Secondly, we quickly touched upon user consent but this actually refers to a broader issue of legal nature, more precisely the GDPR, the European data regulation which is in effect since May 2018. To counter this problem, we will have to be careful to comply with user rights. We need to ensure that our terms and conditions will be accessible to all, simplified and transparent.

One of the more evident, yet considerable challenge involves consumers. We will not be able to meet our financial and strategic goals if the number of users on Warrant-e is too low and the use of the application simply doesn’t catch on. We can tackle this risk by implementing a strong communication and marketing strategy, creating a user friendly product (feedback recovered during pre-launch tests will be key to determine the interface of the application) and highlighting brand values to generate real commitment. Speaking of which, our values revolve around ecology (finding environmentally-friendly solutions for healthier living) and a customer centric offer by having consumers’ best interests at heart.

Moreover, if the ratings and recommendations made by consumers are not justified or fair, then this could seriously damage the application’s credibility. To prevent this and encourage fair behaviour, we will have to develop a pedagogic approach with users and clearly explain our mission and the enhanced role they each play individually. In cases where this fails and users are not providing honest and rational reviews, we will be forced to impose disciplinary measures such as freezing the user’s account or even banning them from the application. Furthermore, to hold more credibility and in an effort to appear impartial, ratings will also have to take into consideration several variables such as the way people treat their devices.