ABSTRACT
The aspiration of this book was to find answers to the question of why ecoefficient or sustainable services are not more popular in the consumer market, and explore ideas for making them more attractive for consumers. For some years, the evidence has been mounting that services designed for sustainability could be one of the feasible ways to reduce the environmental burden caused by the affluent societies, without people having to sacrifice the fulfilment of their needs. This approach has worked relatively successfully in business-to-business services, but consumer services keep staggering. It appears that the present infrastructures and institutions often tend to favour material-intensive forms of consumption, many symbolic values are related to the ownership of products, and many times even those consumers who would be interested in using services for sustainability are unaware of them. This list of obstacles sounds rather desperate, but on the other hand there are also positive trends that can support the sustainable consumer service approach if correctly utilised, as we could see in this book. It takes a fair amount of time and effort to change institutions, infrastructures and dominant consumption mentalities, and such a shift will not come from one single source but from many little streams. Some steps are possible already now.
