Circular Business Models in Automotive Industry - A Systematic Literature Review

Keywords:

Abstract:

While researchers have increasingly investigated the extent to which circular business models contribute to sustainability in various production chains, in the sense of increasing the circularity of the flow of materials, through recycling, reuse, refurbishing or remanufacturing, the auto industry is barely studied.
There is scarcity of research about planning, structuring and putting into practice a circular business model in the automotive industry. In fact, most of the literature on the automotive industry focuses on exploring impacts of vehicle use (in mobility, energy usage or air pollution) and little about post-use. Regarding circular business models, several business model proposals are presented as a way of guiding decisions in different production chains (Bocken et al., 2021), but little attention is paid to the automotive industry. To fill this gap, this article aims to answer the following research question: how are circular business models characterized in the automotive industry? In order to achieve this goal, a systematic literature review was carried out, followed by a content analysis. We tried to proceed in this way to specify and relate, organized and systematically, all the relevant concepts that answer this research question, with the objective of advancing the frontier of knowledge regarding the relationship between circular business models applied to the automotive industry, identifying potential barriers and/or drivers, and identifying possible research streams.