A New Servicizing Business Model of Transportation: Comparing the New and Existing Alternatives Via Neutrosophic Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The new normal of the world has been shaped by the COVID-19 outbreak by avoiding public transportation in order to prevent the spread of the disease. Due to the high financial burden of purchasing a car, new business models have been developed in order to make possible of utilizing vehicles to meet the transportation needs in pay-per-use base concept called “servicizing” or “servicization” which is based on presenting a product as a service, and selling the functionality of that product instead of the product itself. In order to meet the increasing demand for individual vehicle use, the existing car rental service providers have provided a new mobile application controlled business model which makes the rental process easier. The aim of this study is to evaluate the customers’ preferences of purchasing, renting through an agency, or mobile application supported new pay-as-you-go business model use, in order to determine which criterion is prominent in the decision-making process, and to identify the weights of these criteria. Due to the uncertain and indeterminate attitudes of the customers in decision making, the data were collected as neutrosophic data sets and analyzed with a novel neutrosophic Analytic Hierarchy Process (nAHP) approach. The study provides implications both theoretically and practically in terms of revealing new servicization possibilities and analyzing real user judgments © 2022, Neutrosophic Sets and Systems.All Rights Reserved.