Brand loyalty among Norwegian car owners

Obtaining brand-loyal customers has been demonstrated to be vital for profitability and survival of firms. Loyal customers generally have a higher willingness-to-pay and lower price sensitivity compared to other customers. In this article, we study brand loyalty among car owners using empirical data on 35,000 car changes in Norway from 1985 to 2013. In contrast to earlier studies on loyalty within this industry that aimed at revealing the attitudes of customers, our data discuss the actual behaviour. As a supplement to our behaviour data set, we use satisfaction measures produced by Autoindex. Average loyalty, as measured by the consecutive purchase of the same brand, amounts to 26.4%. By including returning customers and measuring the repurchase of the same brand as one of the customer's three previous cars, the average loyalty increases to 36.7%. In general, the most prevalent brands attract the most loyal customers. A logit model is applied to describe the factors that have the strongest influence on brand loyalty. The information obtained by this study is of interest to several parts of the automotive industry value chain. Moreover, the analysis is relevant for researchers conducting attitudinal studies on loyalty and satisfaction by comparing this information to the actual behaviour of customers.     

Affective-symbolic and instrumental-independence psychological motives mediating effects of socio-demographic variables on daily car use

An empirical study investigates the extent to which affective-symbolic and instrumental-independence psychological motives mediate effects of socio-demographic variables on daily car use in Sweden. Questionnaire data from a mail survey to 1134 car users collected in 2007 were used to assess the relationships daily car use as driver or passenger have to sex, household type (single or cohabiting with or without children), and residential area (urban, semi-rural or rural). Reliable measures of affective-symbolic and instrumental-independence motives were constructed. The results show that households with children use the car more than households with no children, that men make more car trips as drivers than women who use the car as passenger more than men, and that households living in rural areas use the car more than households living in semi-rural areas who use the car more than households living in urban areas. An affective-symbolic motive partially mediates the relationship between the number of weekly car trips and sex, the instrumental-independence motive partially mediates the relationships between weekly car use and percent car use as driver and several of the socio-demographic variables (living in urban vs. rural residential area for both measures; sex and living in urban vs. semi-rural residential area for percent car use as driver). Of several other socio-demographic variables (age, employment, and income) affecting car use, only the relationship of the number of cars to percent car use as driver was (partially) mediated by the instrumental-independence motive.     

Berliet, the obstructed manager: too clever, too soon?

Marius Berliet, a pioneer of the car industry, was one of the first to introduce Taylorism in France. He wanted to implement standard costing techniques in his company at the very same time they were conceived in the USA, around the time of the First World War. Given that this technique was to become popular in France only during the 1950s, this article seeks to understand the reasons which prevented it from being applied at Berliet's company forty years earlier. One obvious explanation is the burden of the cost accounting methods which prevailed in France until 1950. The paper also considers the hypothesis of a lack of interest, and skill by those who could have promoted this new technique, especially managers and engineers.     

On the estimation of temporal mileage rates

Mathematical and computational techniques are developed for the analysis of annual roadworthiness (MOT) test data that the UK Department for Transport has placed in the public domain. This paper develops a new theory to estimate fine-scale temporal (e.g., monthly) variations in vehicle mileage at a population level – derived from coarse-scale (e.g., annual) mileage data at an individual vehicle level. Numerical time-stepping schemes are derived from the theory and are tested on synthetic data to permit comparison with a known ground-truth mileage rate. Finally, we consider first steps in applying the methods directly to the MOT data set.     

Value drivers of corporate eco-efficiency: Management accounting information for the efficient use of environmental resources

Eco-efficiency is oftentimes considered the gold standard for managerial decision making in an environmental context because it seemingly reconciles the efficient use of capital and the efficient use of environmental resources. We challenge this view by disaggregating eco-efficiency to provide an in-depth analysis of corporate eco-efficiency and to identify the drivers of an efficient use of environmental resources. By building on the value-based approach in financial management, we extend the rationale of economic value drivers to develop drivers for the efficient use of environmental resources. We apply this logic to analyze the carbon-efficiency of major car manufacturers worldwide. The analysis clarifies the conceptual relationship between the use of economic and environmental resources by firms. The analysis shows that the drivers of capital efficiency and eco-efficiency are not fully congruent. These findings underpin critical voices that question the supposedly unproblematic link between corporate eco-efficiency and economic value creation. We illustrate that the efficient use of environmental resources is complementary rather than instrumental to capital efficiency. Consequently, the challenge of managing eco-efficiency is to unshackle it from the current capital-oriented domination. The findings provide managerial guidance on the value-creating use of environmental and economic resources. Conceptually, our argument contributes to the debate between critical and managerial perspectives on environmental accounting and helps to address the current standoff between these two camps.     

基于SCP范式的中国轿车营销模式研究

轿车营销模式是有关轿车产品在营销环节的制度安排。本文将轿车的营销环节看作一个“微型化”的产业,借助产业组织理论的SCP范式建立营销模式的分析框架,从市场结构(略)、市场行为和市场绩效等不同的层面对中国的代理制、特许经营、多品牌经营及网络营销等轿车营销模式进行分析和比较,并得到有意义的结论。     

基于Nested—Logit模型和产品差异性理论哦企业“广义利润”最大化策略及应用

本文介绍了Logit模型,并分析了Logit不足,引出了更适合于研究产品之间的替代关系的Nes- ted-Logit模型。考虑到国内家电市场价格战现状,提出有别于“利润”概念的“广义利润”,其中涉及到与市场份额有关的“长远利润”。通过市场份额与价格的联系,制定使企业广义利润最大化的价格,同时通过计算机模拟轿车市场的定价,我们将会更加深刻地体会模型的实际使用。在追求广义利润最大化的基础之上,我们假设产品差别市场中存在纳什均衡,随后通过理论与计算机方法考虑在博弈情况下的定价组合。     

The elephant in the scheme: Planning for and around car parking in Melbourne, 1929–2016

A relatively recent body of literature has looked critically at the role of car parking in urban areas, showing that a significant determinant of the extent of parking space is the planning system. Of particular importance are statutory minimum off-street parking requirements for new developments. If parking and parking policies are significant to urban outcomes, one question that follows is − how active a role (if any) has strategic urban planning had in car parking? In this paper we ask if, and in what ways, car parking has been a stated strategic planning interest over the course of nearly a century of planning for one city − Melbourne, Australia. Our approach has three parts: a content analysis of strategic planning documents over time; a corresponding analysis of statutory policies on the ground; and reflection on what this means for the relationships between strategy and policy.We find that extensive car parking, treated as a public good, was once specifically planned as a critical component of facilitating a car-based city. We show that car parking has receded as a strategic policy issue over time, but that statutory minimum parking requirements introduced in the 1950s continue to be entrenched. Even with more recent strategic plans seeking to curtail car use and increase urban densities, minimum parking policies originally introduced to achieve the opposite effects have remained largely intact. We argue that parking has a significant role in urban form but is, in our case study city, illustrative of gaps between strategic and statutory planning, and between planning practice and research. Whereas post-war planning instigated policy approaches to car parking as a means of planning for car use, strategic planning in Melbourne now plans around parking − the elephant in the scheme. The findings have implications for other intensifying cities with a history of minimum parking policies; as well as for cities now undergoing rapid motorisation.     

Exploring the post-termination stage of consumer–brand relationships: An empirical investigation of the premium car market

This research extends customer lifecycle models to include a post-termination stage that bridges the dissolution stage of a consumer–brand relationship with a potential recovery stage. Drawing from 43 depth interviews with former customers of a car brand, this study relies on grounded theory and triangulation to explore consumer responses in the post-termination stage and finds evidence for both negative and positive customer responses after dissolution. The authors combine qualitative techniques with categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) to explore the dimensionality of post-termination responses and extract relationship-related and termination-related response dimensions. They use these dimensions to identify four distinct post-termination customer clusters, which differ systematically with the customer's termination reasons, as demonstrated through a series of exact logistic regressions. In addition to providing evidence of a post-termination stage, this study offers implications for customer relationship management.     

The geography of car ownership in Mexico City: a joint model of households’ residential location and car ownership decisions

Suburbanization and car-ownership have increased rapidly in developing-world cities over the past half-century. This study examines the relationship between income, car ownership, and suburbanization across geographies and households in metropolitan Mexico City. Neither car-ownership trends by geography nor a mixed logit model of 43,000 households’ joint car-ownership and residential-location decisions suggest that car ownership and suburbanization are moving hand-in-hand. Instead, wealthier households tend to live in central locations and own and drive cars, while poorer households tend to live further from the urban center and rely more heavily on transit. If a random household’s income doubles, that household is around 44% more likely to get an additional car and 29% more likely to live in the urban center. Given the sticky nature of housing supply and the current model of peripheral housing production, aggregate responses to higher income are more difficult to predict, as they will almost certainly be offset by higher prices. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that higher income and car ownership do not tend to encourage a move to larger houses on larger suburban lots in Mexico City.