Servitization and Customer Perceived Value - A qualitative study on how customer perceived value is shifting due to the servitization in the automotive industry

Abstract: Servitization is one of the major transformations that impact the future development of the automotive industry. The servitized trend has revolutionized the automotive offerings from providing merely products to providing a comprehensive solution package consisting of products, services, knowledge, and other intangible elements to address customers' needs from a holistic perspective. A lot of previous research has studied the impact of servitization on suppliers, while little attention is given to the customer perspective. Moreover, much existing research studying customer perceived value unfolds in the context of B2C industries. Therefore, this study, on the basis of Lapierre's (2000) framework with three dimensions and 13 value drivers, investigates how customer perceived value is shifted in the context of the B2B industry, automotive industry, due to servitization. This study explores how customers of a very successful automotive supplier respond to the value-related questions regarding products, services, and relationships in qualitative and semi-structured interviews. By analyzing the empirical data, this study shows how major dimensions in the framework change, how value drivers under each dimension shift, and the relative importance of value drivers under each dimension. By the end of this study, a new customer perceived value integrating all of these shifts is produced, thus building an up-to-date framework to understand customer perceived value in the automotive industry.