Abstract

Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) is a potential solution for customer profitability analysis (CPA), especially in industries with high overhead costs and a high number of logistical and/or sales transactions. Accordingly, this study draws on the typology provided by Lind and Strömsten (2006) to investigate how companies with different customer interfaces make use of time-driven activity-based costing in their customer profitability analyses. We build our investigation primarily on the interventionist method and participant observation. Our findings highlight the potential benefit for firms when modern costing connects with customer-focused operations. However, challenges include a lack of process time information as well as functioning information systems and the ability to develop strong service delivery capabilities. We contribute to the scarce knowledge on the implementation and use of sophisticated costing methods in SMEs from a customer-oriented perspective.