Selling Mobility instead of Cars: New Business Strategies of Automakers and the Impact on Private Vehicle Holding

Abstract

This article considers the business strategy of an automaker entering the car‐sharing market. Given the high growth of the car‐sharing industry, this could become a new business segment and simultaneously have effects on branding. The considered case is a car‐sharing system called car2go, which was launched by Daimler in 2009. An empirical analysis based on primary data (N = 1881) indicates that private vehicles are reduced as a consumer reaction. This constitutes a potential for environmental gains, as shared and consecutively used cars require less of production resources compared to a higher number of private cars being bought, driven and parked individually. Implications for public policy are that the allocation of public space to car‐sharing systems could result in a net gain of space in cities. Policy makers should also consider the dependency of car‐sharing schemes on municipal support regarding parking spaces and they should anticipate the upcoming electrification. This is the first study on a large‐scale car‐sharing system operated by an automaker using retrospective primary data. It contributes to the assessment of the current trend of car manufacturers launching car‐sharing schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Review of sustainable service-based business models in the Chinese truck sector

“…However, cases presented in these papers do not fulfil all criteria of a result-oriented PSS as defined by Tukker (2004). In the car sector, Edinburgh CityCarClub (Catulli, 2012;Williams, 2007) or Daimler Car2Go system (Firnkorn & Müller, 2012) are two examples of pay per unit result-oriented PSS targeting individual…”

“…Some examples of automotive result-oriented PSS exist and we could classify eight papers in this category (Catulli, 2012;Williams, 2007;Firnkorn & Müller, 2012;Baines et al, 2009Baines et al, , 2011. However, cases presented in these papers do not fulfil all criteria of a result-oriented PSS as defined by Tukker (2004).…”

“…The most commonly employed approach is the case study based on interviews. Studies conducted by Zhang et al (2014) and Firnkorn and Müller (2012) are two rare examples of quantitative survey-based studies related to a PSS offering in the automotive sector. In the former case, the scholars validate their research framework establishing relationships between customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and the five service quality dimensions of the SERVQUAL model (Parasuraman, 1998) based on survey data from 181 customers of car rental companies in China.…”

“…Finally, we added one book , four book chapters (Nieuwenhuis & Wells, 2003;Radgen, 2014;Visintin, 2014;Gaiardelli et al, 2014b) as well as four journal articles (Firnkorn & Müller, 2012;Wells & Orsato, 2005;Meier et al, 2010;Sundin & Bras, 2005) which were traced back from previous literature reviews but our search process failed to extract them. At the end of this process, our sample contained 22 studies.…”

“…As a consequence, we could identify only one business model offering exclusively result-oriented services . Concerning the management of end-of-use vehicles, only two business models always operate with a reverse logistics supply chain driven by the vehicle manufacturer (Firnkorn & Müller, 2012;Laperche & Picard, 2013). …”