售後服務在近代越來越被重視，可以說是用來定義和描述一間公司不可或缺的重要元素之一。不幸的是，關於售後服務品質的資訊，顧客往往只能藉由聽取過去已購買消費之使用者的過往經歷來判定一間公司售後服務的好壞。公司如果想要在銷售實際發生前，向顧客展現其售後服務的好壞並不那麼容易。其中一種最廣泛被使用的方式即是對其所販賣的產品提供保固，藉由提供資訊服務、專業維修等來照顧顧客一段時間，藉此表明其對於產品品質的重視及自信。現代汽車於一九九九年開始，對其公司所販賣的汽車提供了十年、十萬英里的保固。這樣的保固長度不管是在當時或者是現在，比較起其他競爭者都是非常驚人的，就連眾所周知的汽車龍頭Toyota、Nissan等等公司所提供的保固皆只有現代汽車的一半。在必須面對更多售後服務成本的情況下，究竟是什麼動機促使了現代汽車做出這樣的決策，而且在多年後證實了這是一個正確且合理的決策？ 本篇研究主要闡述了一種公司能藉由生產更多產品來累積經驗，藉由產品品質的提升來獲益的情形，並試圖使用學習的角度來解釋現代汽車的策略。研究結果顯示，在深刻了解品質是必須學習的情況下，確實有選擇使用更長的保固時間來吸引顧客消費藉此促發學習、提升產品品質並降低產品故障的可能性。過去學習曲線相關文獻大多都著重於生產過程中的成本縮減，像是原物料、維修費用等等。本篇論文主要的貢獻是將學習的概念帶到另一個層面，帶出藉由品質學習來降低產品銷售後的服務成本，並帶出策略學習的可能性。After-sale service has attracted a lot of attention, and is becoming an indispensable and very important element to define and describe an enterprise nowadays. Unfortunately, consumers can only get that information from past user’s experience. It is not easy for an enterprise to show the consumers how great the after-sale service is before purchase actually takes place. One of the most common ways is to provide products with warranty. Provide professional assistance and repair, and take care of their consumers for a certain length of time. Show the consumers about an enterprise’s ambition and confidence of making better quality products.Hyundai Motor Company started to provide their customers vehicles with 10-year / 100,000-mile warranty since 1999, which is way longer than its rivals in the industry. Giants in the industry such as Toyota and Nissan provide only half of it. What’s the incentive that motivates Hyundai to choose such a strategy, even knowing that they’re going to face higher service costs in the future? This research illustrates a situation where firms can benefit by improving the quality of the product from getting more experienced, and tries to explain the strategy of Hyundai in the perspective of learning. The result shows that if we’re aware of the presence of learning in quality, it’s possible to choose a longer warranty length to stimulate demand thus induce learning on purpose. Most of the previous literatures in learning had focused on the cost reduction in manufacturing, such as material, maintenance…etc. The main contribution of this research is to step the concept of learning to another aspect, introducing the idea of after-sale cost reduction through learning in quality and brings out the possibility of strategic learning.
