Customer Experience Management Take-home exam. Dr. Juho-Petteri Huhtala Department of Marketing

Transcription

1 Take-home exam Dr. Department of Marketing

2 Take-home exam (30%, individual grading) Please provide answers to the questions based on the short case Answer the questions in a comprehensive, yet structured and concise manner It is important to provide the underlying reasoning for your answer and to support your argumentation with concepts, methods, examples etc. Do not exceed a maximum word count of 1,200 words (total, excluding customer journey map) Take-home exam deadline: :59 Handed in via to juho-petteri.huhtala@aalto.fi (format: studentnumber_cem2018.pdf/.docx, e.g _CEM2018.pdf)

3 Case of M-Cars - background Founded in 1920 in Germany, M-Cars has a long tradition of manufacturing and selling cars Made in Germany to middle class drivers in their late 30s to 50s. The brand has seen increasing market share until the beginning of the 1990s. However, from the mid-1990s onwards sales have steadily declined from to only today, equaling a drop in market share of almost 10%. This not only put M-Cars, but also a majority of its independent car dealers close to bankruptcy. Additionally, it severely damaged the brand in its main target group. Some managers within the company blamed the economic recession starting in 2008/2009 for the severe downturn. Having witnessed the steady decline of the company, the newly appointed CEO of M-Cars, Mr. Smith, had different feelings. With increasing low cost competition from Asia and German premium manufacturers outperforming M-Cars in terms of brand perception, Mr. Smith saw M-Cars in a dangerous stuck in the middle position. In an internal assessment he identified four main problems: (i) poor product portfolio, (ii) irrelevant brand, (iii) no management of the customer experiences and the customer journey, (iv) lack of a media and digitalization strategy. However, M-Cars management board is still not convinced and Mr. Smith lacks internal support for his view. In an attempt to address younger target groups, Mr. Smith pushes for the development of a new car, which is directly targeted at customers aged 18 to 25. He believes that this launch is an important first step which has to go hand-in-hand with heavy advertising spending in order to stage the customer experience of the M-Cars brand

4 Case of M-Cars Current business model (by CEO Mr. Smith) INFRASTRUCTURE OFFERING CUSTOMER Key partners Supply chain partners Car dealers Key activities Manufacturing Key resources Production engineers Wellconnected sales professionals Costs Value proposition Made in Germany REVENUE LOGIC Customer relationships In person customer support (call center) Channels Car dealers Traditional (mass)media Company website Revenue and benefits Customers End-users: Middle-class drivers in their late 30s to 50s Production Sales & marketing Research & development Operations Car sales

5 Your task (I/II) To implement the transformation of M-Cars, Mr. Smith reaches out to a consultancy company. You are assigned as the lead-consultant to the M-Cars project Customer Experience Initiative. Being an expert on customer experience management, it is your objective to provide guidance on how to handle customer experience related problems and to provide insights on the requirements of managing the customer journey also those insights that might be overlooked by Mr. Smith and his management team. Following state-of-the-art customer experience management practices is crucial for the success of your project. From prior experience you know that the following points need to be addressed in the project: 1. Why does the current situation of M-Cars require a customer experience initiative? (20%) Please also consider: To address current problems of M-Cars and further potential customer experience problems not mentioned/clearly understood To explain who will be the main stakeholders you need to address in this consulting project (and why?) 2. Building on the idea of the purchase funnel (see e.g. Session 4 slides), Mr. Smith is convinced that an advertising strategy targeted at segment of young customers aged 18 to 25 should be the uppermost priority. What are the pros and cons of this strategy? What will be your project focus? Please provide an outline of the scope of the project that you would recommend to Mr. Smith (25%)

6 Your task (II/II) 3. To get an overview of the customer journey, you plan to map the customer journey for M-Cars (based on secondary data sources [use google] and/or your experience with similar car brands). Please provide a customer journey map for M-Cars including motivation & goals, touchpoints, barriers & opportunities and explain/justify your approach in the light of M-Cars situation and objectives (30%) Please also consider: to address a potential categorization of touchpoints that help Mr. Smith and its team to manage the journey to explain the importance of the journey mapping tool for M-Cars 4. Based on your prior experience, you are convinced that providing an outstanding customer experience is a vital success factor for M- Cars turnaround. You would like recommend and outline the requirements of customer experience strategy to Mr. Smith (25%). Please also consider: to outline the requirements when implementing an outstanding customer experience (e.g. what kind of business model is required?)