Gian Carlo Bauer

Gian Carlo is a 25-year-old student currently finishing his Master of Arts in Business Innovation at the University of St.Gallen. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the University of Zurich and is interested in electric mobility.

At the Institute for Customer Insight at the University of St.Gallen he is currently writing his master’s thesis in the field of pricing strategies for electric vehicles. With regard to falling battery cost for electric vehicle manufacturers (and hence additional potential for purchase price reductions) the objective of the thesis is to identify trade-off decisions of consumers when deciding for or against an electric vehicle on different price levels. The results will be used to develop pricing strategies for electric vehicle manufacturers based on identified consumers’ willingness to pay. Therefore, he is preparing an online survey including a Van Westendorp and an Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint analysis. The target group of the survey will be Swiss people interested in buying a vehicle in the near or middle-term future. To promote his thesis, he will use targeted social media marketing instruments.

Results

To summarize, the empirical analysis revealed a realistic willingness to pay for a compact class BEV which lies well within the predicted drop range in battery prices until 2030. In the Conjoint analysis where price parity between the different vehicle classes was assumed an astonishingly high share of preference for all BEV classes are revealed. In addition, differences in preferences between different consumer segments are identified such as a significant gender gap in importances of the examined attributes. In the market simulations, the price sensitivity of participants for the examined attributes is identified. The simulations reveal that a driving range below 300 km is unacceptable even for micro cars. Although higher driving ranges lead to a higher expected share of preference a driving range of 400 km seems to maximize the perceived value of consumers in a trade-off decision between a lower price and a bigger battery. These results strongly support the predicted increase in market share of BEV in all classes over the next decade, given that the predicted cost improvements of vehicle batteries are realized.

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