The circular economy paradox: Strategy, consumer value, and market trade-offs

The circular economy has emerged as a prominent sustainability paradigm, encouraging practices such as reuse, repair, sharing, resale, and extended product lifecycles. Increasingly, firms adopt circular economy initiatives as part of their business strategies to pursue differentiation, legitimacy, and long-term value creation. At the same time, the effectiveness of these strategies depends critically on how markets and consumers interpret, evaluate, and respond to circular offerings.

However, as circular economy initiatives become increasingly visible in consumer markets, their acceptance and effectiveness cannot be assumed. Circular offerings often diverge from dominant consumption logics built around ownership, novelty, convenience, and linear value creation, thereby introducing new forms of uncertainty and evaluation for consumers and brands alike. 

From a strategic perspective, circular economy initiatives represent deliberate choices that reshape business models, governance structures, and competitive positioning. From a consumer and market perspective, circular offerings challenge established consumption norms related to ownership, quality, convenience, and status, generating both opportunities and resistance. These two perspectives are deeply interdependent. Strategic intentions cannot be realized without market acceptance, and consumer responses acquire strategic significance when they influence firms’ ability to scale, legitimize, and sustain circular initiatives.

This Special Issue adopts an integrative perspective that brings together business strategy and consumer research to examine the paradoxical nature of circular economy initiatives. Rather than privileging one perspective over the other, it focuses on how strategic design and market interpretation interact to shape value creation and competitive outcomes. Marketing and consumer behavior processes are treated as central mechanisms through which circular strategies succeed, adapt, or fail.

We invite contributions that examine circular economy initiatives as market-facing strategies whose outcomes depend on both firm-level decisions and consumer responses. Of particular interest are studies that explain how firms navigate strategic trade-offs in designing and implementing circular business models, as well as studies that illuminate how consumers make sense of, evaluate, and respond to these strategies. The Special Issue aims to advance theory by clarifying how interactions between strategic intent, market signaling, and consumer value perceptions shape firm performance, legitimacy, and long-term competitiveness.

Through this dual focus, the Special Issue seeks to contribute to ongoing debates in business strategy, marketing, and consumer research on sustainable value creation, competitive advantage, and market evolution in a circular economy context.

List of topic areas

The special issue seeks contributions that address a broad range of topics at the intersection of the circular economy, business strategy, and consumer and market dynamics. Indicative themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Adopting circular economy as a strategic choice shaping firm competitiveness
• Designing and governing circular business models as strategic systems
• Consumer value perceptions of circular offerings and their strategic implications for circular initiatives
• Perceived value trade-offs, perceived sacrifice, and market acceptance of circular offerings
• Brand legitimacy, credibility, and trust as strategic resources in the circular economy
• Strategic communication, signaling, and consumer responses to circular claims and narratives
• Managing consumer identity, status signaling, and meaning-making in circular consumption
• Addressing consumer resistance, skepticism, and implications for strategic scaling and risk management
• Strategic market segmentation and targeting under circular economy strategies
  Adapting cultural, institutional, and industry contexts shaping circular strategy and consumption
• The role of digital technologies (AI, IoT, blockchain) in enabling and mediating circular economy strategies
• Smart technologies, data transparency, and trust formation at the strategy–consumer interface
   

Both conceptual and empirical submissions are welcome. Methodological approaches may include experiments, surveys, qualitative research, mixed-method designs, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), and Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). This Special Issue particularly encourages studies that demonstrate strong theoretical grounding and clear relevance to firm-level strategic decision-making and market-facing processes such as branding, communication, and segmentation, as well as their implications for consumer value creation, competitive advantage, and long-term circular performance. Submissions adopting multi-level perspectives, cross-cultural or cross-industry settings, or longitudinal and configurational approaches are especially encouraged.

Special Issue Guest Editors:
 

• Prof Clare D’Souza, La Trobe University, Australia
• Prof Emmanuel Yiridoe, Dalhousie University, Canada
• Dr Dung Minh Nguyen, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Timeframe:

Submission open on 1 June 2026 

Submission close on 31 September 2026

Acceptance deadline on 31 May 2027

Submit your paper here!