Customer perceived value : a survey of small enterprises' perception of value, in a mobile data services context

To succeed in a fierce market situation, companies have to offer the customers higher value than the competitors. According to theory, value consists of two major parts, benefits and sacrifices. The value can be enhanced by either increasing the benefits or by decreasing the sacrifices. Some authors argue that the most efficient way is by reducing the sacrifice. The sacrifice determinants are divided into monetary and non-monetary costs. The monetary costs are composed of purchase price, acquisition cost, installation cost, transportation cost, order-handling cost, costs for maintenance & repairs and costs associated with the risk of failure or poor performance. The non-monetary costs comprise of time, energy and psychical costs. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and describe the sacrifice determinants, which are crucial in an offer in general as well as crucial to Swedish companies with up to ten employees. To accomplish this, a survey of 300 companies has been carried out in co-operation with Företagarnas Riksorganisation. Our findings indicate that the major concerns of the very small enterprise, lies in the purchase price, the risk of failure or poor performance, and active time cost, when evaluating a mobile data service. Other determinants that do have an impact on value are the acquisition cost, the installation cost, the passive time cost, and the psychical costs.Validerat; 20101217 (root