Classification of Servitization and Resource Allocation for Bike Industry

To be more competitive in the global market, more and more Taiwanese bike manufacturers are seeking servitization to increase competitive advantage and generate more revenues for the company. The objective of this paper is to empirically classify the feasible servitization models that satisfy customer requirements, and to effectively allocate limited corporate resources for the bike industry. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to those who own or used to rent bicycles for sports and exercise in Taiwan’s market. Two hundred and forty three effective questionnaires were collected. The statistical method of factor analysis was used to extract and categorize the feasible servitization models and the two way importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) was adopted to identify how the corporate resources were used, based on which suggestions were provided to the bike industry for proper resource allocations. Results from factor analysis show that there are six feasible servitization models for the bike industry. Among those, ”Providing basic after-sale service” is very essential and plays a niche one according to the ISA. Whereas, redundant resources may be put on “Providing customized-products and extended warranty”; thus some of the resources can be switched to increase performance of “Incorporating electronic devices with exclusive sports tour service”, which performs the worst and needs to be strategically allocated more concentration and more resources to improve customer satisfaction.