User Experience Design as a Building Block in a B2B Company’s Market Strategy : An empirical study of how the user experience of a software service can be used to create increased customer value

Sammanfattning: The after-sales pricing industry has, as many other industries, transformed with the digital era which have enabled automatization and scalable solutions. For companies pricing over 35 000 after sales items, scalable, digital solutions is needed. “The Company” International AB offers their SaaS solution Price, which integrates with the company’s ERP system and helps gain as much profits as possible by assisting with value-based pricing.  But lately, “The Company” has realized to be able to be market leading they need to ensure a better user experience (UX). This research’s aim was to understand how design affect customer value by understanding what UX factors are important to succeed in a B2B after-sales spare part market. The main research question were thereby: How do the UX design affect the customer value on an after sales digital service?. An important note to make is that this study will focus on the market, UX design trends and customers and their needs – not how the design should be done per se (e.g. “this button should be green, not blue”).  From the literature review, the sub-elements of UX were found to be Functionality, UI Design, Usability and Affect. Moreover, Organization is found to be a vital part to enable as good the UX as possible. The review suggested all sub-elements and their units could play a part of creating enhanced customer value.  The study is based upon qualitative interviews, followed up by a quantitative validation form studying the sub-elements and CSI. The interviews were held online with video calls and lasted for about 1–1,5 hr.  The findings verify earlier studies and implications, that all UX sub-elements do affect customer value significantly. The factor with least correlation to CSI is functionality which could be explained by being a hygiene factor, not motivator factor. Another finding, in contrary to B2C research, suggests that positive emotions is not wished for in B2B software’s as the users are “forced” to use the software as it is a part of their job, but this implication need to be further researched.  To be able to use UX as a market strategy “The Company” is advised to, within the product development team, not only prioritize new functionalities but also improving existing functionalities. It is also advised to share UX goals and vision throughout the different division working with Price. Some actions advice to take to enhance Price’s UX is making error messages actionable, enabling the user to save drafts in wizards and make it possible for the user to terminate any actions in the system.