Abstract
The European automotive industry has been fiercely hit by the recent economic downturn, which has further emphasized the structural overcapacity of production plants and price competition in the sales of new vehicles. Services constitute the main means for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), authorised dealers, and repair shops, as well as the independent actors, to survive and be profitable, thanks to the size and age of the vehicle fleet. Servitization is thus a strategy pursued by manufacturers and their networks. However, the offering is still dominated by transactional, product-oriented services. Moreover, the relevance of services is still not fully recognized by the service network, which is not completely aware of the impact of servitization on profitability and customer loyalty. In addition, end customers are often not aware of the full range of services available. Further, the perceived importance of services by the network and the final customers may differ. At the forefront of servitization are noteworthy experimentations of sustainable mobility solutions that improve environmental impact and quality of life. These are the forerunners of new business models dominated by result-oriented services, where customer get access to vehicles on-demand rather than through direct ownership.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter has been inspired by the activity of the ASAP Service Management Forum (www.asapsmf.org), a community where scholars and practitioners from Italian universities and several leading manufacturing companies, consulting firms, and service providers collaborate in developing research projects and share findings in the product-services management field. The authors wish to express grateful thanks to Giuditta Pezzotta and Barbara Resta, researchers of the Research Group on Industrial Engineering, Logistics and Service Operations (CELS) of the Engineering Department of Bergamo University for their contributions to the research described in this chapter. The authors also gratefully acknowledge MobilDelvac1 that supports their research in the automotive industry.
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Gaiardelli, P., Songini, L., Saccani, N. (2014). The Automotive Industry: Heading Towards Servitization in Turbulent Times. In: Lay, G. (eds) Servitization in Industry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06935-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06935-7_4
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