Transforming the plastic industry toward producing more sustainable alternatives than conventional plastics, as an essential enabler of the bio-based circular economy (CE), requires reinforcing initiatives to drive solutions from the lab to the market. In this regard, startups and ideation and innovation events can potentially play significant roles in consolidating efforts and investments by academia and industry to foster bio-based and biodegradable plastic-related developments. This study aimed to present the current trends and challenges of bioplastics and bio-based materials as sustainable alternatives for plastics. On this basis, having conducted a systematic literature review, the seminal research themes of the bio-based materials and bioplastics literature were unfolded and discussed. Then, the most recent developments of bio-based sustainable products in Ukraine, as alternatives to petroleum-based plastics, that have gained publicity through local startup programs and hackathons were presented. The findings shed light on the potential of the bio-based sector to facilitate the CE transition through (i) rendering innovative solutions most of which have been less noticed in academia before; (ii) enhancing academic debate and bridging the gap between developers, scholars, and practitioners within the plastic industry toward creating circularity across the supply chain; (iii) identifying the main challenges and future perspectives for further investigations in the future.

Recent studies have advocated that digital technologies (DTs) positively affect the transition of a linear economy model to a circular economy (CE) model and facilitate enterprises in implementing circular strategies. Despite this general statement, the literature still overlooks how enterprises should apply various DTs of Industry 4.0 across the entire product lifecycle to operationalize CE-related strategies. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a conceptual framework exploring DTs in terms of CE operationalization from the perspective of the product lifecycle. Based on insights gained through a systematic literature review, we clarify how DTs can facilitate CE performance objectives through the three stages of the product lifecycle: product design, product use, and product recovery or recycling. Furthermore, we study how various Industry 4.0 DTs, such as the Internet of things, big data, and cloud computing, are utilized to operationalize the transition toward a CE. DTs applied to the service-oriented product-service system contributes innovation into circular business models to make full use of idle resources and provide high-quality personalized services. We have adopted three performance objectives: using fewer materials and resources, extending product lifespan, and closing the loop to evaluate the effects of DTs in promoting CE development. By investigating how DTs affect CE performance objectives, the conceptual framework developed in this paper advances the knowledge regarding the role of DTs as an enabler of CE from the product lifecycle. Our findings provide a practical reference enabling researchers and managers to harness the potential of DTs to support CE transition.

The shopping service of the store plays an important role in shaping the opinions of customers in a store. Endless progress has been made on quality management of consumer services confirmed through numerous methods and standards that are based on consumers. A typical consumer receives a large amount of information in the shopping process. In the process of perception of this information, consumer must not only find necessary data, but also process, analyze, and evaluate this date, and weigh the pros and cons, relate it to his own needs, and at the end, make a decision: to buy or not to buy a certain product. All these reflect on consumer’s fatigue, stress, and other negative fallings obtained during any shopping. In this case, the buyer can make the wrong choice and the quality of his decisions would deteriorate. Therefore, investigation influence of store type on the emotional state of consumers in the urban purchase provides significant reserve for marketing development in this sphere. Research provides explanation of emotional fatigue on the type of stores. The regression models describing the shift in emotional state of the buyer in purchase process of different type of shops were obtained. Research was conducted in the residential area of Kharkiv, Ukraine. The presented model shows the average value of the indicator of the emotional system of buyers after shopping, which can be used to determine the likelihood of shopping on the basis of emotional fatigue.