Abstract
The after-sales business is the most profitable area within the automotive industry. All manufacturers seek to tighten their ties with end customers in order to ensure loyalty and foster economic success. In times of dramatic change in the automotive industry (switch from combustion to electric engines, etc.), digitalization plays an evermore important role for developing sustainable business models. End customers in after-sales are as individual as their cars. In an ideal case, every customer is addressed individually, taking the individual's specific needs into account: the classic, but rather complex segment-of-one. This paper presents a multi-dimensional framework for customer segmentation in the automotive after-sales domain which uses a reduced number of segments. It addresses end customers on a perceived individual basis while reducing the complexity significantly compared to a full segment-of-one approach. It provides a holistic view on customers' characteristics, taking into account their specific vehicle needs for maintenance as well as several factors defining the individual's approach to services delivered by the car manufacturer. As such, a perceived segment-of-one is provided. The concept was evaluated using a qualitative study with industry experts and stakeholder representatives. Based on the findings, recommendations for the application of the framework in practice are provided.
First Page
98
Last Page
113
Recommended Citation
Bregant, Rebecca; Jandl, Claudia; Brune, Philipp; and Gewald, Heiko, (2017). "HOW TO MANAGE THE SEGMENT-OF-ONE? A FRAMEWORK TO REDUCE CUSTOMER COMPLEXITY". In Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Guimarães, Portugal, June 5-10, 2017 (pp. 98-113). ISBN 978-989-20-7655-3 Research Papers.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2017_rp/7