Martin Haehner

Martin finished working on his master thesis to complete his Master in Business Administration at the University of Mainz, Germany. He has focuses in International Management and Marketing. Besides his studies he is working in the Business Development department of a huge Germany service company. His passion is basketball and travelling. He also spent half a year backpacking around the world.

Martin’s master thesis is focused on the examination of the acceptance factors of electric vehicles in the luxury segment. Up to now luxury customers used to buy cars with combustion engines. But stricter environmental standards will force luxury manufactures to offer electric solutions, which have totally different characteristics than combustion engines. Therefore Martin has conducted a CBC with the Sawtooth module to see what the most important attributes of electric luxury car are, so that luxury consumer will accept electric vehicles.

The paper shows that mainly short ranges and long charging times of electric cars will slow down its adaption process in the luxury market. On the other hand luxury consumers accept electric cars which have slower charging times and shorter ranges than regular cars as long as the vehicles accomplish a minimum standard in these product characteristics: A range of approx. 500km and a charging time of not more than 4 hours. If a battery electric vehicle is able to realize these standards, luxury customer perceive it as beneficial towards plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and as more or less equal valuable than usual cars with a combustion engine.

Luxury car manufactures can use these results by integrating battery electric cars in their existing product portfolios while regarding plug-in hybrid electric cars as niche products in this market segment. To market the battery electric luxury vehicles, car manufactures need to emphasize the positive effects of the consumption of battery electric cars on the image of the car owner. Furthermore manufactures need to illustrate the driving enjoyment and the rarity of battery electric vehicles to address these customer. Additionally the application of covariates leads to the result that the marketing of battery electric vehicles should focus on people with a strong tendency towards status consumption and who already own two or more cars.

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