University of Twente Student Theses
Customer value in the high-tech and pharmaceutical transportation industry
Slager, Lisanne (2016) Customer value in the high-tech and pharmaceutical transportation industry.
|
PDF
565kB |
| Abstract: | In the transportation industry there has been a shift concerning the pharmaceuticals and high-tech products, the market share Dutch companies hold might have to be defended. Knowing what customers value and using this to create a competitive advantage can help defend market share. The research question this study wants to answer is: “what do shippers and forwarders value in the services provided by the transportation industry when shipping pharmaceuticals and high-tech products?”. This knowledge can then be used to write good value propositions to attract market share. Woodruff’s value hierarchy model was used to operationalize customer value and eight semistructured interviews were conducted, four concerning the pharmaceutical sector and four concerning the high-tech sector, to collect data on what customers value in these industries. These results were then coded according to this operationalization and analyzed. It was found that services are only chosen because their aspects help a customer reach a particular goal, in this case either cutting cost or improving/maintaining quality. To attain these end-goals the different industries preferred different aspects to reach the same goal, so companies should write different value propositions when wanting to attract pharmaceutical and/or high-tech market share. It showed that for the pharmaceutical industry quality, in terms of good temperature management, was a very important aspect, since their product often needs specialized circumstances to safeguard product integrity. Recently companies have also started focusing more on price to keep costs down. In the high-tech industry quality was important in terms of speedy and reliable delivery. However, these aspects were often seen as prerequisites. Here a low price was mentioned as the main denominator for why services were chosen. The value hierarchy model used during this research was proven to be a useful tool to measure customer value in Business-to-Business markets. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 01 general works |
| Programme: | International Business Administration BSc (50952) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/70138 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
Show download statistics for this publication
Show download statistics for this publicationRepository Staff Only: item control page