Product details

The case deals with the concept of planned obsolescence in an economic, industrial and marketing context. The lifespan of consumer goods is becoming a major challenge for companies. The current economic situation leads companies, and notably the ones specialized in high tech, to innovate and present new machines or services almost each year. Inasmuch as the consumers' patterns have changed since the eighties, now companies have to comply with higher demand from the customers, who are focused on novelty and purchase price and have recently become more attentive to green issues. In 2015, the American brand Apple presented next generations of all-in-one products - notably the new generation 21.5 inch iMac - whose distinct feature consists in having the processor and memory welded and therefore non transformable. So these products are neither reparable nor having update capability. The complexity for a consumer to grasp the lifespan of a product and for a producer to predict a product weaknesses lead to information imbalance. And that is the core of the case problematics.