Customer Retention in the Automotive Industry: Quality, Satisfaction and Loyalty

✍ Scribed by Michael D. Johnson, Andreas Herrmann (auth.), Michael D. Johnson, Andreas Herrmann, Frank Huber Ph.D., Anders Gustafsson (eds.)

• Publisher: Gabler Verlag
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 368
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The intensely competitive global automotive industry is in the midst of both a quality evolution and management transfonnation. In an evolutionary fashion, industry attention has progressed from a focus on internal quality, to external perceptions of customer satisfaction, to subsequent customer retention and profitability. More transfonnational is the change in the way automotive companies operate and manage themselves. An industry once dominated at a product level by engineering and a management level by fmance is becoming a cross functional, customer oriented industry. Understanding the links from quality to satisfaction to retention has become a key to financial and organizational success as the automotive industry enters the new millennium. We are fortunate, in this regard, to have assembled a diverse group of both academic and automotive industry contributors to offer a variety of insights into these links. After describing the ongoing changes in the automotive industry in more detail, this introductory chapter describes a framework for linking quality, satisfaction, and retention. The framework is used to introduce each of the individual chapters and highlight its contribution. Although our primary emphasis is on the automotive industry, the implications of the research and lessons learned extend far beyond. If anything, the automotive industry is a prototypical competitive, global industry that faces a myriad of business issues. These include, among others, issues pertaining to product development, service development, process improvement, product quality, service quality, supplier relationships, internal customer satisfaction, external customer satisfaction, retailing, promotion, pricing, franchising, and technology management.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-VIII
An Introduction to Quality, Satisfaction, and Retention — Implications for the Automotive Industry....Pages 1-17
Linking Satisfaction to Design — A Key to Success for Volvo....Pages 19-39
Improved Customer Satisfaction Is Volvo Priority....Pages 41-65
Design of Lines as a Product-Policy Variant to Retain Customers in the Automotive Industry....Pages 67-92
From Value-Orientated Quality Improvement to Customer Satisfaction — A Case Study for Passenger Cars....Pages 93-115
Achieving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Retention Through Strategic Alignment....Pages 117-139
The Complex Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty for Automobiles....Pages 141-166
Method Supplied Investigation of Customer Loyalty in the Automotive Industry — Results of a Causal Analytical Study....Pages 167-213
Strategic Loyalty Management-Some Reflections Regarding Customer Retention Instruments in the Automotive Industry....Pages 215-257
The Case of Mercedes-Benz-Quality in Customer Retention Management....Pages 259-278
The BMW Customer Report — Dealer Satisfaction as a Strategic Success Factor for High Brand Loyalty....Pages 279-292
Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty in the Automotive Industry - Results of an Empirical Study....Pages 293-315
Customer Retention in the Automotive Industry - An Economic Analysis....Pages 317-348
The Value of Passenger Car Customers....Pages 349-370

✦ Subjects

Economics/Management Science, general