A novel neutrosophic set based hierarchical challenge analysis approach for servicizing business models: A case study of car share service network

Abstract

Servicization as a part of circular economy has a prominent role in operations management research by emphasizing the functionality of the products. Servicizing business model is a phenomenon that the products are converted into services for sale, or process of transforming the consumers into users. This newly introduced way of business is defined as a new opportunity for operations management by focusing on; the reliability and durability of the products against the extreme repeatedly use, coordination problems in conducting the business, risk of encountering unknown negative customers, and moral hazard in product usage, operational difficulties, and the degradation of the products. All of the aforementioned issues in implementing the servicizing business models constitute a research question with the high impact of COVID-19 pandemics. Since people avoid using public transportation, car share programs are highly in demand. In addition, there is an obvious research gap in challenge analysis of the car-sharing programs’ literature, an overall service network challenge analysis is missing in the field of study. Hence, the purpose of this study is proposing a novel neutrosophic set based hierarchical challenge analysis approach for the servicizing business models with a step by step guidance, and presenting a real world case study addressing a car sharing company’s entire service network. A practitioner can understand which challenge should be dealt with first, what is the inter-relationship structure of these challenges in a hierarchy, and what is the expected final result of these interactions. The study also contributes to the theoretical background by using neutrosophic sets to propose a novel interpretive hierarchical challenge analysis. In this research, the evaluation of truth and indeterminacy membership degrees of a neutrosophic set are gathered separately instead of applying the defined linguistic variable schemes. The case study is a contemporary field of study attracting attention of innovative entrepreneurs, since there is an increased demand of individual car driving due to the isolation requirement arisen from COVID-19 pandemics.