Incentive Scheme within a Sustainability CRM for Mobility

Abstract

The ecological dimension of sustainability in the meaning of consumption of natural resources is one important topic of our times. The transportation of goods and persons has a major impact on resource consumption and emissions. Electric vehicles are not solving these problems but they are offering a chance for a change of the mobility behaviour towards an eco-friendly mobility. This change of behaviour needs new transportation offers, new business models and new information systems. Intermodal transportation and the switch from individual mobility with combustion engine cars to public transport is here a key factor. Also new offers like car-sharing and car-pooling are playing an important role. Mobility management and mobility marketing addressing this switch of mobility on a municipal and on a company level. New and existing mobility provider like Deutsche Bahn sustainable mobility issues in their information and marketing policy. At the end the customer has to change his behaviour and has to accept the more sustainable offers. With the integration of a Customer Relationship Management approach this change of behaviour might be brought forward. Incentive schemes are playing an important role within the CRM, because they can directly motivate the costumer to accept certain offers. Incentive schemes can be based on different ideas like game-based or reward-based approaches and have a high ability to be operationalized in software systems. In this paper should be described the idea of a Sustainability CRM and how an incentive scheme can influence customer behaviour to change his mobility to a more sustainable way. Also a software prototype build as a smart phone application for travel assistance is presented that is based on the presented incentive scheme.