The different roles of Total Value of Ownership in the customer interface

Sammanfattning: Current customer accounting (CA) practices help companies to measure and manage customer relationships (Cäker & Strömsten 2010). This study investigates whether the accounting concept Total Value of Ownership (TVO) can be used to expand this traditional role of CA. By investigating whether TVO can be used in the customer interface and what roles TVO can play in this context, this thesis aims at exploring if TVO can be used to influence customer value and thus the value of the customer relationship. To investigate this, an in-depth study of the sales argumentation in a specific customer deal was conducted in GlobIT, a large multinational corporation in the IT industry. It was found that TVO argumentation, in line with the developed definition of the concept, was used in the case. This case could thus be used to identify what type of roles that TVO can play in the customer interface. We identified three main roles that TVO argumentation can play in the sales process i.e an aligner of internal resources, a sales engagement tool and a trust enhancer. The first role confirms the current function of CA, whereas the latter two are found to expand the traditional role of CA.