A Fortune 500 chemical company supplies refrigerant for vehicle air conditioning (AC). In the European aftermarket it reaches workshops only through intermediaries, so it sees little of how AC service is bought and delivered. In late 2021 it began to explore whether it could become more than a refrigerant supplier. One route was vertical integration: adding the recovery, recycling and recharging (RRR) machines that workshops use to service AC systems. A package of refrigerant and machines would give workshops one partner for AC service, a business-to-business model. A network of equipped garages, reached through a digital platform, could then let the company serve car owners directly, a business-to-consumer model.
The company did not know how workshops buy machines and refrigerant, whether they would accept customers referred by a supplier, or whether drivers and fleet operators had AC service needs the market left unmet. It needed evidence from both sides of the market in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom before it chose a value proposition and a go-to-market strategy.
PP&A ran the study in two steps between December 2021 and April 2022. The first step was qualitative. PP&A conducted 12 in-depth interviews with garage owners and technicians from independent and chain workshops, a parts wholesaler, a fleet manager and two RRR machine manufacturers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden. The interviews covered how workshops buy and maintain RRR machines, how they choose and procure refrigerant, how seasonal the AC business is, and how they would view a referral service or customers who had paid in advance.
The second step was quantitative. PP&A designed two surveys, one with about 240 private car owners and one with 60 fleet owners and operators, split evenly across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. The car owner survey traced each respondent's most recent AC problem from first symptom to repair, cost against estimate and satisfaction, then asked about service coverage, payment and waiting-time preferences, loyalty to repair shops and openness to an app-based recommendation. The fleet survey covered fleet size and drivetrains, warranty and extended service coverage, service contracts with repair shops, approved vendor lists, who chooses the repair shop, and sustainability requirements. PP&A combined both streams in a 55-slide report built around customer market signals, machine market dynamics, business model feasibility and how to win customers.
The client received a 55-slide report that set the workshop view of the market beside the customer view. For workshops it covered how garages buy refrigerant and RRR machines, how the AC season shapes their business, and how they would treat customers referred by a supplier or who had paid in advance. For drivers it traced the path from first AC symptom to repair, satisfaction with the result, the service coverage they hold and want, and how they choose a repair shop. For fleets it set out how operators contract for service and what they require of suppliers. The report then weighed the feasibility of each business model and recommended test markets for a new AC service business, with the criteria behind that choice. The client went on to commission a business-model design phase built on these findings.
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