Background:
Porsche has developed new service formats (“Future Retail Formats”) that are currently running as pilots. These formats are designed to enhance the customer convenience (e.g. Be where I am) and also to provide additional capacities as subsidiary of an operating Porsche Center. (You can find an overview of each format attached).
Obviously Porsche doesn’t simply place these formats randomly around the world; they want to do it strategically. They want to place formats firstly there, where the need is the largest. There are indicators like “where are capacities overloaded while also having low parts turnover per vehicle?” to see where there is simply no time for selling parts because it’s so overloaded, plus customers also suffer from long waiting times to be services.
Next to that there are also capacity calculations and sales data but there is one part missing to be able to compare the market areas -> the differentiation between market areas as there are globally huge differences between city and country (e.g. the ways to drive to the Porsche Center, the purchasing power, older models in operation, etc.)
If the current data would be used to define the highest potential/need, all rural regions would automatically have worse data, simply because the market penetration and sellable hours are different. Let’s say you determine the highest need in the market as “highest capacity utilization while having the lowest parts sales per car -> now, if the purchasing power outside of the city or the distance to the Porsche Center or models in operation are all different, how can you even compare the city vs. rural areas and say they are having a higher need?).
In order to determine the greatest demand in the market we need the target market penetration sellable hours to see if a Porsche Center in the city or in a rural area is doing better/worse.
Objective of this dissertation:
The goal is to find an approach for determining the target market penetration along with the sellable hours to differentiate between urban and rural areas (and in between). An example could be to create categories and develop multiplier/factors for country and city or a benchmark system or something else depending on what makes most sense based on researching this topic.
Important: The goal should be to come up if an approach/strategy that can be used worldwide to handle this problem. I doubt that you’ll be able to say what all markets in the world have to insert for the targeted market penetration and sellable hours.
With the outcome of this thesis each market should just be able to define its target market penetration and sellable hours for their further calculations. The focus should really be how it can be determined using a specific tool (Benchmark, Segmentation of areas…whatever seems to be the best approach?)
Please find the Example_Capacity_Calculation.xml attached and see cells from C22-C25 for the targeted market penetration of the car segments and C11/C15 for the sellable hours. Both numbers are simply guessed. Instead markets should be able to define them by your approach.
Note:
My professor said, as it is a 40-45 page thesis (1,5 spaced), I shouldn’t write too much about all different tools that can be considered. It should rather be described why I chose a specific tool and how it can be used for this problem to not waste space.
Steps:
1. Structure/rough table of content and title* for the thesis, that the professor will have to approve (he will reply in less than a week)
2. After that you can start writing and also ask me stuff that I can also forward to my professor.
3. Our grading system has 10 marks, depending on the outcome I’ll tip you and extra of 100 $ for an 8, 200$ for a 9 and 300$ for a 10
*I think it could make sense to include the formats and their purpose in the beginning when stating the motivation and reason for this paper and maybe also in some phrases why those formats are important (e.g. trends like urbanization, e-mobility…)
Here my professor’s recommendations for thesis structure:
Introduction:
– Presentation of the starting point/ introduction to the topic
– Description of the research question(s) and objectives
– Motivation for the topic, if applicable
– Structure of the work
Main part:
– Literature overview
– Theoretical reference frame, if applicable
– Description of the methodology
– Description of the results
– Interpretation of the results and derivation of recommendations for action
Conclusion:
– Summary of the main results and findings
– Limitations/restrictions of the outcomes
– Outlook
I look forward to your structure/rough table