This paper develops a typology of service maneuvers achieved by manufacturing companies. This typology is based on two dimensions: service specificity (split into customer service, product services and service as a product) and organizational intensity (tactical, strategic or cultural).The paper reviews the benefits and costs associated with service maneuvers and discusses their interplay with the typology. A collaborative option is proposed as an original strategy for supporting the challenging process of implementing a service maneuver, and the costs of running this option are developed in the light of the typology.

Challenges the traditional perspective of product services in the business marketing literature. An original classification system is proposed that isolates and compares two types of product services: services that support the supplier's product (e.g. after-sale services) and services that support the client's action in relation to the supplier's product (e.g. training service). A qualitative study based on this classification is then reported. The study centered on one of the main European manufacturers in the micro-electronics industry, and involved interviews with customers, distributors, and managers in the manufacturing firm.

a b s t r a c tThis paper proposes a new way for sociology, through both methodology and theory, to understand the reality of social groups and their "minority practices." It is based on an experiment that concerns a very specific category of agriculturalists called "pluriactive" stock farmers. These stock farmers, who engage in raising livestock part-time alongside another full-time job, form a minority category within the agricultural profession.We address the question of how to analyze and represent the practices of this kind of "social" group or category through participatory filmmaking. Our research shows that beyond the collaborative production and screening of the film done in close cooperation with the stock farmers themselves, a second unexpected dynamic emerged around the sequences that were cut in the final editing round. These cut sequences reveal hesitations and disagreements among the breeders about their own practices in relation to their work and to animal welfare. These hesitations are not considered weaknesses, but rather as proof of the emergence of this group of stock farmers as "practitioners". In the realm of intervention research, the participatory film-making process is attractive because it enables the farmers to raise new questions on their own, discuss them, and eventually resolve them, while also encouraging the researchers to identify the conditions that must be met in order to achieve this fragile linkage. This process and its outcomes force us to revisit the theoretical question of what constitutes a pragmatic definition of a "practice."

No abstract

No abstract