University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Master's Theses 2018 COMPARISON OF AMERICAN, GERMAN AND JAPANESE CAR DEALERSHIP APPROACHES FOR SALES AND SERVICE Lukas Schoske University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses Recommended Citation Schoske, Lukas, "COMPARISON OF AMERICAN, GERMAN AND JAPANESE CAR DEALERSHIP APPROACHES FOR SALES AND SERVICE" (2018). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 1330. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/1330 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMPARISON OF AMERICAN, GERMAN AND JAPANESE CAR DEALERSHIP APPROACHES FOR SALES AND SERVICE BY LUKAS SCHOSKE A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2018 MASTER SCIENCE THESIS OF LUKAS SCHOSKE APPROVED: Thesis Committee: Major Professor Valerie Maier-Speredelozzi David Taggart Sigrid Berka Nasser H. Zawia DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2018 ABSTRACT Based on previous literature, it is known that American, German and Japanese car dealerships use their own strategy to fulfill customer demand and face the different challenges from mass customization. Furthermore, after-sales-service is becoming increasingly important for car dealerships in order to create a positive differentiator or even a unique characteristic in competition between different companies. Therefore, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the different order fulfilment and after- sales strategies that are used by US car dealerships representing auto makers from Japan, Germany and the US. In order to be able to conduct this research and to achieve the goals, a self-made questionnaire containing 17 questions is developed. The objective is to schedule interviews with managers or top managers of the dealership to give semi- structured interviews with them. After collecting all interviews, the results are compared with ten different hypotheses and sub-hypotheses by using multiple two-paired t-tests. After running all the tests, it can be found that Japanese, German and US car dealership activities have become more similar and German and US car dealerships have been successfully closed the gap to their competitors from Japan. For example, Japanese luxury car dealerships have a higher delivery time than GE luxury car dealerships and a comparable one to US luxury car dealerships. Furthermore, American, German and Japanese standard car dealerships sell the same percentage of cars from their inventory by now. However, Japanese makers still have a slight advantage over their German and American rivals in terms of electric vehicles but this is likely to change as German car dealerships are changing their strategy, personnel’s mindset and products. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I would like to express my sincere thanks to my major advisor Dr. Valerie Maier-Speredelozzi. Her motivating and ambitious way of teaching and sharing her expertise in this field of research made the thesis an effective and enjoyable experience. Furthermore, I want to thank her in supporting my various interviews. Thank you to my committee members Professor David Taggart, Professor Sigrid Berka and the Chair of Defense Professor Norbert Mundorf for reviewing and evaluating my thesis and sharing their knowledge. In addition to that, I would like to thank everybody involved in the cooperation between the University of Rhode Island and the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. This accounts for Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ulrike Krewer and Patrick Schön in particular, as they serve as my German committee. I want to thank Nina Schneider and Dr. Ute Kopka from the International Office of the Technische Universität Braunschweig that I received the opportunity to make this academic and social experience of living in the United States and studying at the University of Rhode Island. Last but not least, I am thankful for the great support of my parents Carola Schoske and Rainer Schoske, my brother Marvin Schoske and all my beloved ones. Without their unlimited assistance, this experience would not have been possible. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ ix 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................................ 5 3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................... 28 3.1 Interview Approach ............................................................................................ 28 3.2 Survey Questions ............................................................................................... 35 3.3 IRB Approved Procedures & Analysis Methods ............................................... 42 3.4 Standard and Luxury Classification ................................................................... 49 3.5 Hypotheses ......................................................................................................... 53 4 RESULTS ................................................................................................................ 72 4.1 Hypothesis 1 ....................................................................................................... 72 4.2 Hypothesis 2 ....................................................................................................... 79 4.3 Hypothesis 3 ....................................................................................................... 84 4.4 Hypothesis 4 ....................................................................................................... 90 iv 4.5 Hypothesis 5 ....................................................................................................... 97 4.6 Hypothesis 6 ..................................................................................................... 102 4.7 Hypothesis 7 ..................................................................................................... 106 4.8 Hypothesis 8 ..................................................................................................... 111 4.9 Hypothesis 9 ..................................................................................................... 114 4.10 Hypothesis 10 ................................................................................................. 119 5 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................... 125 5.1 Summary of Findings ....................................................................................... 125 5.2 Future Work ..................................................................................................... 127 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................ 129 APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................ 132 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 185 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Market share on US auto market by nation in 2017 ....................................... 3 Figure 2: Percentage of an automotive company’s turnover at different company's departments .................................................................................................................. 18 Figure 3: Percentage of an automotive company’s profit at different company's departments .................................................................................................................. 19 Figure 4: In 2025, what area of operations will be most profitable? ........................... 23 Figure 5: US market share of most important car makers from the US, Japan and Germany ....................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 6: Major tasks for an interview using a questionnaire ...................................... 34 Figure 7: The Modern Dice Roller is used to randomly select 8 Japanese and American car dealerships .............................................................................................................. 36 Figure 8: First route calculated by google maps to seven different car dealerships .... 44 Figure 9: Extended spreadsheet using colors to show status of dealerships ................ 45 Figure 10: Minitab screenshot of the data tables and the selection of the 2-sample t test as part of basic statistics ............................................................................................... 48 Figure 11: The two pairs of data for the 2-sample t-test are selected. ........................