Planning Product Support for Medical Products
Product support is a key aspect in the marketing of high-technologyproducts, since it strongly influences customer satisfaction and can also be animportant source of revenue. Typical forms of support include operatortraining, equipment maintenance and, if necessary, repair - all of these arenormally provided by manufacturers' support organizations. Good support isparticularly important in some markets; an example is medical equipmentwhere good operator training and quick repairs are essential becauseproducts are used in critical situations. Despite its importance, support hasnot been extensively researched. This study describes a managementinvestigation of two aspects.Several authors have identified that product support is dependent onproduct design. Consequently, the same authors emphasize that supportshould be thoroughly evaluated during product design. This study identifiesthe range of factors that may be evaluated and shows that most of thecompanies surveyed do not fully evaluate support during the design stage.These results are not covered by previously published material and haveimplications for management.As support influences customer satisfaction, it is important to knowhow customers perceive support. The study investigated the customerattributes of good support, using interviews with medical equipmentcustomers. The results show that a common set of attributes are associatedwith support, some relating to the product itself and some to the supportorganization. The characteristics of products which are easier to supportwere also identified from the interviews.The contribution of the research is that it made an exploratoryinvestigation of the concept product support. It not only gave the first surveydata on how companies plan support but also investigated customers'perceptions of product support. Consequently the study provides afoundation from which there is real scope for further management research,into what is becoming recognized as a vital element of high-technologymarketing.
Year of publication: |
1992-10
|
---|---|
Authors: | Goffin, Keith |
Other Persons: | New, Colin (contributor) ; Clark, G. (contributor) |
Publisher: |
Cranfield University |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
Similar items by person
-
Supplier management in german manufacturing companies : an empirical investigation
Szwejczewski, Marek, (1999)
-
Supplier base management : the contrast between Germany and the UK
Lemke, Fred, (2000)
-
Comparative operational performance of UK and German manufacturing plants
New, Colin, (1998)
- More ...