An empirical Approach for After Sales Service Portfolio Planning

After sales service has been acquiring a strategic role within company’s business due to its contribution as a first source of profit generation in the short term, as a customer satisfaction lever which works up to customer loyalty and repurchase intent, as well as a provider of valuable technical data and marketing information for the development of new products and solutions. Hence, it is evident how servicing industrial products can not be yet considered a mere reactive technical issue. After sales managers need to adopt a proactive strategic perspective, committing themselves to the creation and development of a broad and sustainable after sales service portfolio in order to fulfil at best the specific and heterogeneous requests coming out from the market. The main objective of the paper is to propose an empirical approach aiming at supporting after sales managers in identifying and selecting the most suitable after sales service portfolio accompanying a manufactured product during its usage life-cycle according to the specific explicit and implicit customers emerging needs.