Journal of Enterprise Information Management Emerald Article : Flexibility and revenue management in the automotive industry

Purpose – This research aims to analyze the potential of revenue management in the German car industry. The concept offers the chance for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to be more customer‐oriented to reduce costs and increase earnings. To implement revenue management, criteria are required to segment the customers. The car configuration changes and the delivery time look suitable in this context and this paper aims to analyze these.Design/methodology/approach – Survey analysis was conducted with 2974 German buyers of new cars. The respondents recently bought a car or were in the planning process of doing so. A total of 803 data sets could be evaluated statistically using SPSS software. Descriptive statistics and mean test were utilized to test several hypotheses and find out distinctions between the respondents.Findings – The results show that German car buyers could be segmented in to different groups according to the criteria: delivery time and configuration changes. This enables manufacturers...