Sustainability in digital solutions: Balancing sustainable measurements and customer experience in a firm working with digital solutions
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Introduction: It is acknowledged that organizational activities have an impact on the environment. The commitment towards sustainable development has increased over time. Digital solutions can pose as both enable and limit the development towards reaching the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). It is argued that the hardware in digital solutions is gaining the most attention in research, and that the software also needs sustainable assessments. Further, digital solutions can also contribute to indirect emissions. By combining the complexity of assessing the sustainability in digital solutions with the competitive advantage of customer experience in a company working with digital services this project aims at how these two concepts can be balanced.
Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand how a digital firm can balance the competitive advantage of customer experience together with sustainability assessment of digital solutions.
Method: The study has an inductive design, with a method of explorative case study, which seeks to observe patterns and construct a relationship between customer experience and sustainable assessment for digital solutions. The approach for data collection was through a literature review and purposive sampled interviews. The data from the interviews was then thematically analyzed.
Results: The results show that there is a connection between customer experience and sustainability, and that some things that enable higher customer experience also influences sustainability. It also shows that customer experience is used as a tool to enable more consumption. Therefore, customer experience can be seen as an enabler for sustainability digital solutions themselves since improvement of performance also decreases the usage of resources in digital solutions. Customer experience can also enable more emissions as a higher order effect since the purpose of the digital platforms is to enable more consumption through higher experience.
Conclusions: Conclusions from this study is that the design in digital solutions and products can be used to integrate sustainability and customer experience. The results also show that consumption can be an indirect effect of improved customer experience in digital services.
Originality: The contribution of this work is to find common factors between sustainability and customer experience.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 46
Keywords [en]
Digital sustainability, Carbon emissions, Measurements, Customer Experience, Sustainable Development Goals
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-96690OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-96690DiVA, id: diva2:1796591
External cooperation
Ninetech
Subject / course
Business Administration
Educational program
Engineering: Industrial Engineering and Management (300 ECTS credits)
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-09-202023-09-122023-09-20Bibliographically approved