A Product Avatar for Leisure Boats Owners: Concept, Development and Findings

The European boat industry is suffering from a slowdown in customer demand. The manufacturers and other stakeholders are forced to think of new ways to regain competitive advantage and to attract and maintain their customers. A promising approach is to develop new services based on the collection of information throughout the product lifecycle. Different stakeholders can use the services over different channels, such as Social Network Services, by means of a Product Avatar. In this paper, a general introduction to the Product Avatar concept of providing targeted information through selected channels is given first. Next, the technical aspects regarding the implementation and integration of the required data sources are outlined briefly. A presentation of a Product Avatar prototype for a leisure boat and results of two customer acceptance surveys towards end-user acceptance is concluded by a brief discussion and interpretation of the findings and an outlook towards further research.