Case General Motors Onstar Project
Case General Motors Onstar Project
Case General Motors Onstar Project
Nick Pudar
General Motors Corporation, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, 400 Renaissance Center, P.O. Box 400,
Detroit, Michigan 48265
Jim Smith
General Motors Corporation, OnStar Headquarters, 1400 Stephenson Highway, Troy, Michigan 48083
Mark Paich
Decisio, 320 West Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected]
specics of the model that we used to analyze the strategic choices, and we present the nancial, organizational, and social impacts the project created.
OnStar is GMs two-way vehicle communication system that provides a variety of services that enhance
safety, security, entertainment, and productivity (Figure
1). The vehicle communicates with either an automated
system, called the virtual advisor, or with a human advisor through a cell-phone connection. Two-way
0092-2102/02/3201/0020$05.00
1526-551X electronic ISSN
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The General Motors OnStar Project
Figure 1: OnStar provides safety and security, Internet, and communications services.
concept, in 1996, GM made OnStar available as an option on some Cadillac models. The services at that time
were limited to safety and security and a few other
features, such as remote door unlocking. The OnStar
system required complicated installation by the dealer,
costing about $1,300. The high cost and hassle of installation limited customer acceptance, but market research showed that buyers found the system extremely
valuable and that the customer retention rate was very
high. Some senior GM executives believed that with
the appropriate strategy, OnStar could become an important product.
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and what competitive and complementary technologies would emerge among the Internet, digital cellular
services, and hand-held devices, such as PDAs.
A reasonable approach to such pervasive uncertainty
would be to postpone any major investments until the
picture became clearer. GM could run a portfolio of
small technological experiments to develop and preserve its options until the direction of the market became clearer. Once the situation was better dened, GM
could be a fast follower that could prot from the mistakes of bleeding-edge competitors. In the Internet eld,
for example, the blood of failed rst movers, such as
WordPerfect, CPM, and VisiCalc, and various Internet
companies is splattered all over the battleeld.
Specically, if GM took an overly aggressive approach, it might make large investments in vehiclecommunications hardware and infrastructure and
then fail to recover the costs because of low customer
demand. A good example of the failure of an aggressive strategy in communications is Iridiums launch of
satellites that cost several billion dollars. The system
never attracted many subscribers, and Motorola was
forced to write off most of its investment. On its face,
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important strategic decisions through the dialogue decision process (DDP). DDP consists of four stages to
reaching agreement on decisions: framing, alternatives, analysis, and connection (Figure 3). At each step,
the project team interacts with the decision board that
is responsible for actually making the decision and
committing resources.
Dynamic modeling can be a part of each stage. For
example, in the alternatives phase, analysts often use
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Figure 4: The simulation model of the telematics industry included multiple, interacting sectors.
(1)
where NS is the number of new subscribers added during a time period, TR is the take rate (a fraction between zero and one), and V is the number of new vehicles on which OnStar is available. V can include both
GM and non-GM vehicles, depending on GMs policy
toward alliances with other vehicle manufacturers.
The modeling of the take rate (TR) begins with ideas
developed in the product diffusion literature. The take
rate is the product of customer awareness and customer choice:
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TR A*C,
(2)
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Customer Choice
To calibrate the customer-choice sector, GM commissioned a conjoint study to estimate how consumers
would respond to different subscription fees, initial
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(3)
where S is the number of subscribers for a specic service (OnStar, Ford, and so forth), V is the number of
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The analysis showed that the costfocused strategy would cause the
effort to fail.
disadvantageous to create a new service and more advantageous, especially for small manufacturers, to join
a coalition. High fees (F) for participating in a coalition
reduce the probability that an outside manufacturer
will join. Finally, some manufacturers will be very hesitant to partner with other manufacturers, such as Ford
with GM, so that the identity of a coalition sponsor (M)
inuences the probability of an alliance.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) benet
greatly by joining an OnStar coalition. First, replicating
the GM system would be very costly for auto manufacturers with much lower volumes than GM, especially if GM were able to exploit positive feedback and
add high-value services. Second, assuming that consumers nd telematics services attractive (market research supports the conclusion), if several competing
OEMs were to join the coalition, the holdout competitor could lose precious market share in the vehicle
business. Finally, if OnStar were to build a credible
third-party distribution system with the AMIC standard, OnStar would have access to the competitors
cars even if they didnt join the coalition. OEMs could
conclude that their best interests lie in joining the coalition and cutting the best deal possible, instead of
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Customer Service
The customer-service sector represented demands for
customer service and the acquisition and retention of
service capacity. Poor customer service could restrain
the long-run growth of OnStar. Rapid subscriber
growth increases the demand on the call centers.
OnStar must be able to match customer-service capacity to demand or, beyond a point, the quality of its
customer service will deteriorate. Common sense suggests and the literature on customer service conrms
that customers poor experiences with service reduce
the attractiveness of the service, reduce the rms acquisition of new subscribers, increase churn, and generate negative word-of-mouth.
A rm can minimize the negative effects of inadequate customer-service capacity by choosing the right
customer-service policy. Often, rms run their call centers with a cost mentality. Their objective is to minimize the cost of the call center by paying low wages,
Executive summaries of Edelman award papers are presented here. The complete article was
published in the INFORMS journal Interfaces [2002, 32:1, 20-34]. Full text is available by
subscription at http://www.extenza-eps.com/extenza/contentviewing/viewJournal.do?journalId=5
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