Research On After-sales Service Strategy Of York Corporation

As after-sales service plays an increasingly important role in a company's competitive advantage,it is necessary for manufacturing enterprises to develop a strategy which will maximize shareholders' value as well as meet customers' needs. In this thesis, I choose York Company, the world famous air-conditioner supplier in the US, as the subject of our study. From the viewpoint of the value chain management theory, using the value chain analysis method, based on the value chain of the company, industrial value chain and supplier value chain, integrated with the strategy theory analysis, I analyze the change of maintenance operation of York Company in China, and find the driver that urged the York Company change its maintenance pattern in China.The thesis contains three parts. In the first part, I introduce the theory framework of the thesis, including summary of the strategy theory and the value chain theory, the linkage of the two theories, and after-sale service value chain analysis. In this part, I introduce the contribution of good after-sale service to enterprise value, and discuss what kind of after-sale service is value-added activity, and how the enterprise do value management to the non-value-added after-sale service using value chain analysis method. In the second part, I put forward the three patterns of after-sale service in the manufacture firm, the applicable condition of every pattern, and the pattern chosen process, standard and method. In the third part, I use case study approach, analyze the York Company after-sale service operation in China based on the framework mentioned before.