Daan Holman

Daan Holman is a master's student in Supply Chain Management at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He is currently working on his master's thesis. Daan has a strong motivation for contributing towards sustainable practice in both business and society.

Daan's master thesis focuses on consumer evaluation of a business-to-consumer servicizing business model (SBM) for mobile phones. In an SBM, a firm acts as a service provider. Instead of selling a product, a product's functionality is sold, possibly with additional services. The product stays in ownership of the service provider. This kind of business model is already present for products such as washing machines, bikes, cars and mobile phones. An SBM for mobile phones has the potential to lead to increased benefit in terms of profitability, sustainability and consumer surplus, as opposed to a traditional sales transaction. Thereby, also satisfying the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.

An example of how an SBM for mobile phones could lead to more sustainable practice is that a firm can develop a product pool to serve customers. When a customer stops using a product, the product returns to the company and can be used again to serve another customer. In this way, less products need to be manufactured to serve the same number of customers. This can be very beneficial for mobile phones, as these contain valuable finite resources such as minerals and chips.

For a business model to be viable, it should be attractive to consumers. To identify what the most important attributes of potential SBMs for mobile phones for consumers are, the research uses Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) Analysis. Examples of attributes are pricing, product features and additional services.