Repair cafés: exploring collaborative repair

Repair is an underexamined phenomenon in the marketing and consumer behaviour literature. Self-repair is hampered by a number of factors, including lack of access to parts, repair manuals, and the risk of invalidating product warranties. Given these constraints, repair cafés have developed around the world to assist consumers in repairing their possessions. Repair cafés are pop-up community events where consumers bring items for repair and collaborate with expert volunteers to fix them. Limited research exists around collaborative repair undertaken at repair cafés. This chapter seeks to better understand volunteers who offer their time and expertise at repair cafés. In addition, the chapter considers how organizers facilitate repair cafés in their community through various marketing activities. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with volunteers and repair café organizers, we examine the motivations and benefits to participation, and the impediments to collaborative repair, through Tronto’s five phases of care.