The context in which service is delivered and experienced has, in many respects, fundamentally changed. For instance, advances in technology, especially information technology, are leading to a proliferation of revolutionary services and changing how customers serve themselves before, during, and after purchase. To understand this changing landscape, the authors engaged in an international and interdisciplinary research effort to identify research priorities that have the potential to advance the service field and benefit customers, organizations, and society. The priority-setting process was informed by roundtable discussions with researchers affiliated with service research centers and networks located around the world and resulted in the following 12 service research priorities:
•	stimulating service innovation,
•	facilitating servitization, service infusion, and solutions,
•	understanding organization and employee issues relevant to successful service,
•	developing service networks and systems,
•	leveraging service design,
•	using big data to advance service,
•	understanding value creation,
•	enhancing the service experience,
•	improving well-being through transformative service,
•	measuring and optimizing service performance and impact,
•	understanding service in a global context, and
•	leveraging technology to advance service.
For each priority, the authors identified important specific service topics and related research questions. Then, through an online survey, service researchers assessed the subtopics’ perceived importance and the service field’s extant knowledge about them. Although all the priorities and related topics were deemed important, the results show that topics related to transformative service and measuring and optimizing service performance are particularly important for advancing the service field along with big data, which had the largest gap between importance and current knowledge of the field. The authors present key challenges that should be addressed to move the field forward and conclude with a discussion of the need for additional interdisciplinary research.

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Service Research Priorities in a Rapidly Changing Context

http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:525010/FULLTEXT01

Enabling service innovation: A dynamic capabilities approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create a framework for measuring mutually created value in business relationships in the manufacturing sector, which also enables suppliers and customers to share this value between themselves.Design/methodology/approach – The starting point is that manufacturing firms adopt a service perspective or logic for their entire business. The framework created includes a conceptual foundation for understanding the process of mutual value creation as well as theoretical basis and metrics for calculating mutually created value, joint productivity gains (JPGs) and value sharing. The framework for mutual value creation is created conceptually. The theoretical basis for the metrics used for the calculations and the development of the metrics are empirically grounded in a longitudinal case study.Findings – By matching supplier and customer practices and thereby aligning corresponding processes, resources and competencies, suppliers can support their customers' business more ef...

Adopting a service logic in manufacturing: Conceptual foundation and metrics for mutual value creation

Despite its often controversial and philosophically divisive nature, preferential treatment of customers holds the potential to contribute to important relational outcomes valued by firms. In this study, sampled customers (n = 2,461) of a national upscale department store chain representing recipients of three different levels of preferential treatment are tested. While controlling for individual customer characteristics, higher levels of preferential treatment are shown to positively influence relationship commitment, increased purchases, share of customer, word of mouth, and customer feedback. This study fills a major services marketing research gap by assessing the favorable effects of higher levels of preferential treatment as a relationship marketing strategy.

Differential Effects of Preferential Treatment Levels on Relational Outcomes

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00266991/document

An investigation into the use of ERP systems in the service sector

Service productivity: Towards a conceptualization of the transformation of inputs into economic results in services

Purpose




The purpose of this study is to develop a service logic oriented framework for business model development. “Service logic” covers the basic principles of the three contemporary customer value focused business logics: service-dominant logic, service logic and customer-dominant logic.




Design/methodology/approach




This study is based on an empirical qualitative research and deployed the focus group method. The data are generated in a series of interactive co-creative focus group workshops involving both practitioners and academics.




Findings




As the outcome, a new tool was developed, called Service Logic Business Model Canvas. The new canvas is a modified version of the original Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).




Research limitations/implications




This study adopts service logic in business model thinking and increases knowledge on how to keep the customer needs in the centre of business model development.




Practical implications




The developed canvas makes the theory of service-dominant logic tangible and easily applicable in practice. It enables service innovation truly based on customer value by ensuring that the customer is in the centre of all the elements of a business model. It can function both as a rapid prototype of a new business model and as a communication tool that quickly illustrates the company’s current business model. It can also help in creating a customer-centred business culture. It is designed to be applied to each customer profile separately, thus enabling a deeper understanding of the customer logic of each relevant profile.




Originality/value




Earlier business model frameworks tend to be provider-centric and goods-dominant, and require further development and adaptation to service logic. This study adopts service logic in business model thinking. It embeds the true and deep customer understanding and customer value in each element of the business model, and contributes to both business model and service-dominant logic literature.

Service Logic Business Model Canvas

Identifying opportunities for service innovation and exploiting them requires novel capability building in the rapidly changing business environments. This study extends the existing literature on dynamic capabilities in service innovation by operationalizing the capabilities of sensing and seizing new opportunities. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how futures thinking and design thinking can facilitate service innovation from the dynamic capabilities point-of-view. As a result this chapter provides a conceptual framework for service innovation process that is grounded on foresight and service design. To synthesize the literature into a new conceptual framework, this chapter is based on a large body of literature from four burgeoning fields of study: dynamic capabilities, service innovation, foresight, and service design. The key point the chapter wishes to make is that a forward look at new methodological perspectives in service innovation is needed and that integrating the methods and tools of foresight and service design to the service innovation process provides a promising new avenue to future success.

Foresight and Service Design Boosting Dynamic Capabilities in Service Innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the mutual learning implications for service productivity of the characteristics of service and service production. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper. The starting point is, first of all, that productivity as a management concept should help a firm to manage its economic profit, and secondly, that service organizations are open systems, where the customers participate as co-producers and are exposed to the firm’s production resources and processes. Unlike in manufacturing, to understand productivity in service organizations as a means of managing profit, cost effects and revenue effects of changes in the productions system cannot be separated. Due to the interaction between customers and the firm’s resources during service production, dialogical collaboration between them develops. This enables mutual learning. Findings – Given the social dynamics in service production processes, four learning processes that influence service product...

Service productivity as mutual learning

Business models have made a breakthrough both in the academic and in business community in the area business development. Old fashioned business plans are in many cases considered as a waste of time and resources. Particularly start-ups and SMEs have a great potential to take advantage of business model approach which allows lean and agile product and service development. However, the existing widely used business model frameworks are lacking the new service logic orientation. They mostly see the world in terms of goods logic. Since all sizes of businesses in all industries are increasingly adopting the service logic or service-dominant logic, there was a clear need to develop a new service logic based business model framework. Based on an extensive empirical study with both practitioners and academics, a new Service Logic Business Model Canvas was developed to fill this need. This chapter explains the theoretical foundations of this framework in SME and start-up context, as well as the framework itself and its application.

Katri Ojasalo

Papers

Service productivity: Towards a conceptualization of the transformation of inputs into economic results in services

Service Logic Business Model Canvas

Foresight and Service Design Boosting Dynamic Capabilities in Service Innovation

Service productivity as mutual learning

Service Logic Business Model Canvas for Lean Development of SMEs and Start-Ups