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.