On the 10th November I had the opportunity to present my last paper “Intangibles in design of PSS Value proposition” that I have written together with Åsa Ericson (Associate Professor at Luleå Institute of Technology) and Professor Tobias Larsson (from Blekinge Institute of Technology).
The paper has presented current opportunities and challenges when a car manufacturer company decides to shift from producing physical artifacts (in this case, cars) to a total offer (such as a car sharing, when the company is responsible for refilling the fuel, maintenance etcetera) from an intangible value perspective.
Usually cars for car sharing are intended to satisfy one main function (basically, moving the customer from A to B) as cheap as possible. The sphere of intangible values (such as emotions, experience) does not seem to be taken to much into consideration.
Intangible values: traditional car seat vs. massaging seat
What happens if we set a massaging seat in the car for car sharing? If we considered the value that the customer gets as benefits/costs we can see that in today’s cars the value perceived for the customer is higher (the massaging seat gets a 10 in benefits, from 1 to 10, but the regular car costs less so the customer trades offs the lower benefits of the regular seat with the lower costs of it. Yet, if we look at a the car for car sharing, the massaging seat can provide higher customer value, since the cost of the seat is shared between other customer. So, “paradoxically” (since car for car sharing are considered merely to satisfy main functions related to transportation) have instead the possibility to deliver higher intangible values to the customer, even embedding highly luxury features!
The paper has concluded that new methods and tools are needed to designers in order to understand, design and assess products and services from an intangible perspective. We are currently developing a framework at BTH and LTU, which is going to be further improved with the industrial partners (within the automotive industry) in the next months.
Here is the file of the presentation:
IntangiblesInDesignOfPSSValuePropositions-BTH-CIRP-IPS2-Massimo Panarotto
MASSIMO PANAROTTO 