| Abstract [eng] |
Acting in a highly competitive and dynamic market, service providers face challenges increasing the competitiveness of services, attracting and retaining consumers. One way to ensure higher new services‘s acceptability among customers is to involve them in the development of new services. The project deals with the problematic issue of how the customer involvement in new service development impacts the results of company’s performance. The object of project is the customer involvement in development of new passenger transport services. The aim of thesis is to reveal the impact of consumer involvement in new service development on the company performance in passenger transportation services sector. The tasks of the thesis are as follows: 1) to conduct a survey of the problems of customer involvement in new service development; 2) to analyse theoretical aspects of consumer involvement in new service development by presenting a theoretical model; 3) to explore solutions for consumer involvement in the development of new passenger transportation services and its impact on business performance. Methods applied in the work - systematic, logical analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire survey, statistical data analysis. The results of the empirical study revealed that passenger transportation companies in Vilnius, Kaunas, Marijampolė, Alytus cities and districts (n = 58) do not have a well-established formal practice of customer involvement in new service development. Consumers are mainly involved in the commercialization phase, where they play the role of a source of information, and least involved in the service development phase. There is a need to develop ways for companies to involve customers at larger scale and use social networking opportunities at all stages of new service development. The conclusions were made, that solutions for consumer involvement in the commercialization phase (involvement scale and means of involvement, activity of customers as users) have a positive impact on the sales volume and market share of the new service. Sales volume is also positively influenced by the number of customer involvement means used at the idea generation stage. Wider involvement of users in the idea generation stage also positively impacts the achievement of goals of new service. Consumer satisfaction is positively influenced by the increased role of consumers as a source of information. The results of the study did not confirm that the solutions of customer involvement in new service development would influence the increase of the competitiveness or the faster introduction of the service. |
