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Dr hab. Anna Tischner
ORCID: 0000-0001-8297-4578

PhD in law, professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University. She specialises in industrial property law and unfair competition law. Author of numerous publications on trademark law, design protection, advertising law, unfair market practices and consumer protection, including the monographs Liability for Trademark Infringement, Cumulative Protection of Industrial Designs in Intellectual Property Law and most recently (together with A. Kur and N. Lee) Fairness in Intellectual Property Law. Her research interests also revolve around problems of circular economy and ecology, including the right to repair. Together with Katarzyna Stasiuk, she conducts empirical research on consumer perceptions, which has subsidiary applications in the resolution of legal problems.

 
DOI: 10.33226/1231-7853.2024.7.2
JEL: D11, D22, I31, L68

Refurbishing is the process of restoring a used product to good condition by cleaning, replacing and/or repairing major components of the product and then bringing it back to the market. The practice is intended to reduce the carbon footprint and improve the level of reuse of resources, promoted in a number of pieces of legislation that implement the European Green Deal. For these measures to be successful, however, it is necessary to convince consumers to buy refurbished products. In order to find out what Poles know about this practice, their attitudes towards refurbished products and the motives and barriers to their purchase, a quantitative survey was conducted on a representative sample (N = 1270). Analysis of its results showed that awareness of refurbishing in Poland is low and few people buy refurbished products. Those who made such a purchase were mainly motivated by the lower price of these products, and the concern for the environment proved to be a far less important motive for the purchase. The most common barrier to the decision to buy refurbished products was the desire to own new products, as well as a lack of confidence in the quality of 'refurbishments'.

Keywords: refurbishing; refurbished products; consumer attitudes; circular economy; right to repair