Abstract
With the fast growing economy, China has become the biggest automobile market in the world. Many Chinese families buy automobiles to promote individual wellbeing and facilitate the convenience of lives. Automobile purchase has become a general and important decision for a Chinese family. However, it is always difficult to make a decision on the automobile purchase that balance the automobiles performance and its cost. Moreover, the automobile maintenance market in China is monopolistic. Thus, the maintenance cost is a significant consideration in automobile purchase decision. This paper employs the concept of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure cost performance of the automobile with considering the monopoly maintenance cost. The RCA (ratio of the total price of accessories of an automobile to the price of the automobile) 100 index system is used to represent the maintenance cost of each automobile. The structure of the automobile maintenance market can be reflected with including the RCA 100 index system in the performance evaluation. Results of the case study of 28 automobiles in China verify the necessity of considering the maintenance cost in automobile purchase decision.
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The authors are grateful to Professor Joe Zhu for his suggestions and comments on earlier versions of the paper.
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This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 71701060, 71801075 and 71501189, Social Sciences Foundation of Anhui Province under Grant No. AHSKY2017D78, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant Nos. JZ2018HGBZ0174, JS2017HGXJ 0028 and JZ2016HGBZ0996, the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province under Grant No. 2017JJ3397, and the Open Project of ‘Mobile Health’ Ministry of Education-China Mobile Joint Laboratory of Central South University.
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Dai, Q., Li, L., Lei, X. et al. Considering Monopoly Maintenance Cost for an Automobile Purchase in China: A DEA-Based Approach. J Syst Sci Complex 32, 1167–1179 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-019-8073-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-019-8073-8