The exploration of experiential aspects of fiber casting machinery in the sales process

Abstract

Modularity is an area of research with lots of applications that is slowly being used in services of different companies ranging from product to sales process. The use of service design methodologies is needed to implement the modular concepts in a product or service. This can be quite challenging without proper methodology and knowledge in how to research to achieve the desired result.

This study explores how experiential elements of fiber casting modular technology can be used to improve and demonstrate modular concepts in the case company’s sales process. The exploration of experiential elements is important as they can increase the user experience of the product and sales process, which can lead to more sales and a more personalized sales experience. Modular concepts are investigated and followed to understand how to best describe them in the sales process.

This thesis begins by analyzing the modularity concepts, competition in the fiber casting product area and service design methods. Then it proceeds to talk about the state-of-art literature that exists in service modularity fol-lowed by the methods used. Interviews with four sales professionals were carried out to better investigate the experiential aspects of the sales pro-cess.

As an outcome of this study and interviews, a prototype tool was developed that presents the experiential element of the fiber casting modular technol-ogy and presents modular concepts in a simple way. This tool will be used to identify the needs of customers early in the sales process of the case company’s modular products.

The findings suggest that experiential aspects such as visual sales material have a positive impact and can be beneficial for the sales process in terms of identifying the needs of the customers much quicker and more effective-ly. Additionally, they suggest the further use of modularity concepts in the sales process as those were presented in the literature review.