Fabian Struett

Fabian Struett grew up in Berlin and currently is a master student at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. Prior to his master, he completed his bachelor in International Business Administration at the same institution.

Fabian is conducting research on factors that are influencing the preference of battery electric vehicles. Specifically, he is going to include and analyze the attributes price, range, top speed, acceleration, total CO2 emissions and tailpipe CO2 emissions in a choice-based conjoint analysis.

The car has become a necessity for a large part of the population in developed countries. However, with the rising number of registered vehicles, the negative effects are also becoming more significant. Cars are currently responsible for 12% of all CO2 emissions in the EU. Fabian therefore is very interested in the recent development of battery electric vehicles. They are able to mitigate the negative effects by relying on more environmentally friendly means to run the car and can also perform better at certain attributes than traditional cars with a combustion engine. Depending on the country, there are policies and subsidies in place to foster the adoption of electric vehicles. However, the adoption rate is relatively slow. His research will therefore allow him to most realistically imitate a real-life purchasing decision and analyze how customers value certain attributes of battery electric vehicles. Car manufacturers can subsequently focus their research as well as marketing activities on valued attributes.

Results

Respondents of the survey were presented with three different product concepts of a BEV from which they can choose one. Moreover, they always had the chance to select none of the options when attribute levels were unfavorable.

It was found that range (25.10%), total CO2 emissions (20.28%) and price (16.20%) are valued the most. The three least valued attributes are the reduction of tailpipe CO2 emissions (13.26%), top speed (13.15%) and acceleration (12.0%). Respondents also derived more utility from a top speed of 190 kp/h compared to a top speed of 250 kp/h. Furthermore, no statistical significance could be found between acceleration times of 3 and 7.5 seconds.

Subsequently, it was determined that males are more enthusiastic about cars and that they value acceleration more. It was also found that individuals with high environmental concern or low car enthusiasm find total CO2 emissions more important than their counterparts. Contrarily, low environmentalists as well as high car enthusiasts find acceleration more important. Additionally, it was determined that the number of cars owned leads to different evaluations regarding the price importance with owners of one car scoring the highest. Similarly, individuals owning two cars found the reduction of tailpipe CO2 emissions most important. When considering the car usage, significant differences for the importance of range could be found as well, with individuals using a car three or four times in a week having the highest importance.

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