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Conceptualizing the Transition to Servitization in the Capital Goods Industry

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Duschek, Walter (2015) Conceptualizing the Transition to Servitization in the Capital Goods Industry. DBA thesis, University of Gloucestershire.

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Abstract

During the past two decades the manufacturing industry has consistently tried to transition from a position as traditional goods supplier to a provider of solutions by means of the integration of goods and services. This integration phenomenon is called servitization. Transition triggers are forces such as economic pressure, gaining competitive advantage and increasing customer demands. In spite of the evident gains identified in the literature, the major part of the industry either advanced hesitantly, or stalled after the first steps. Only a few “hidden champions” succeeded. The status of servitization as an academic field has reached maturity. During the past years, published servitization research papers grew exponentially compared with the early years of this century. The extant literature offers an extraordinarily broad range of researched themes such as servitization avenues, benefits and barriers, bundling, product design, contract models and sales process. What is missing, however, is a conceptualization that focuses on the practical implementation aspects of servitization to guide practitioners to apply servitization sustainably. The findings of my servitization research contribute to knowledge in several ways. They provide a novel understanding about the crucial first step in a traditional product manufacturer’s customer re-orientation. The unique principle of functional arrays facilitates the understanding of the terms “the customer” and “solution”. It permits the identification and collection of specific customer solution requirements by unusual functional disaggregation of entire companies. The creation of customer service demand categories enables a correlation with customers’ functional arrays that consequently leads into the formation of particular service competencies and specific service delivery platforms. For the first time, manufacturers, through these platforms, may proactively address individually and specifically customers’ service demands across the entire customer`s company structure. A final contribution constitutes the conceptualization based on the progression principle of service delivery platforms. The study tackled a business problem through a constructivist research philosophy, employing an inductive approach and adopting a case study strategy. In-depth interviews in real life settings revealed how a traditional product manufacturer should re-orientate its capabilities and progress on a servitization transition.

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Thesis (DBA)

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