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The service industry is of fundamental relevance for the economies of industrialized countries, as the service industry produces the highest growth in the gross domestic product. In this regard, new service development (NSD) represents a critical resource for competitive survival and a decisive factor of growth in the service industry. However, service firms across many industries are increasingly faced with the challenge of determining how best to manage their development of new service offerings. Although researchers have shown growing interest in NSD issues, this area is still underutilized. Furthermore, although the heterogeneity of the service industry has been emphasized for years, the current body of research on NSD mainly focuses on specific service environments, providing data that are often not comparable across different service sectors. Additionally, there is no study to date that comprehensively examines innovation activities and the relevance of service innovations' success factors within different service industries. The aim of this exploratory study is to establish a more balanced picture of the nature of innovation activities in terms of NSD characteristics and success factors in the heterogeneous service industry. From this perspective, this paper begins with an examination of the factors that contribute to the success of NSD. Based on a meta-analysis of new service success factor studies, 17 different success determinants are classified and aggregated to service-related success determinants. Subsequently, a cluster analysis of 1016 service companies is used to identify different service innovation types. For the service sector, four service innovation types are determined: efficient developers, innovative developers, interactive adopters, and standardized adopters. Furthermore, based on interviews with service innovation managers, the previously identified success factors are examined for each innovation type using a standardized survey. Finally, based on the results of this exploratory study, the paper concludes with recommendations for NSD management and research propositions for each service innovation type. These propositions support innovation managers to successfully manage service innovations for the innovation type they are operating in.

The authors examine the concept of customer benefits in business-to-business markets in an international context. They distinguish between core and add-on benefits, and they discuss product quality, service quality, flexibility, trust, joint action, and commitment of the supplier as determinants of these customer benefits. They base their analysis on 981 respondents in two countries. The results suggest the importance of understanding the determinants in providing customer benefits. Furthermore, the authors observe significant cultural differences with respect to the impact of different determinants on perceived customer benefits. Following a discussion of the results, the authors present managerial implications, research limitations, and directions for further research.

Research indicates that creative ideas provide the seed for successful service innovations. However, little attention has been paid to understanding idea creation, especially for service innovations. Lead user analysis has been shown to provide the highest potential to create attractive innovation ideas. But which characteristics in lead users are important in this regard is still under‐researched. In the realm of an idea contest, we examine the impact of specific lead user characteristics in driving the quality of service innovation ideas. Our study broadens the understanding of which customers are suitable and should be activated for service innovation idea contests. Using the data of 120 ideas resulting from an idea contest for new online services of soccer clubs, our findings demonstrate that specific lead user characteristics affect the quality of service ideas generated. We find that dissatisfaction with existing services has the highest impact on idea quality. Thus, companies should make use of their complaint management database to invite dissatisfied users to participate in idea contests. The results also show that highly experienced users provide ideas of higher quality. Our findings imply that companies should design closed‐membership idea contests so that only people who show specific characteristics can be admitted.

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