Development of personalised services in small business: an iterative learning process

Abstract

Purpose -The aim of this study is to achieve a better understanding of how small business develops personalised business-to-business services. Design/methodology/approach -In-depth interviews are conducted with representatives of 11 small Swedish companies in the service sector. Qualitative data from the interviews are coded and sorted according to themes. Findings -Service development in the firms studied is an unstructured, incremental, and relatively informal process that proceeds as part of the firms' day-to-day interactions with their customers. It is essentially an iterative learning process by which individuals develop new knowledge and competencies to enhance the capacity of their firms to solve the specific problems of customers. Originality/value -In contrast to the highly structured and sequenced models that have characterised most of the existing research on service development, this study provides an alternative view of new service development as a relatively informal learning process.

A capabilities-based service development process for industrial manufacturers

“…Stevens and Dimitriadis (2005) designed an informal organisational learning process which is influenced by interactions with internal and external individuals and groups as well as infrastructure. Gottfridsson (2010) also focused on learning and described the NSD process as being iterative but relatively informal. His cognitive process is about creating knowledge and acquiring competencies to develop a new service.…”

“…To cope with that fact, researchers shifted from activities-oriented models to such resting upon competencies. Recently formulated NSD processes are based on learning (Gottfridsson, 2010(Gottfridsson, , 2012Stevens and Dimitriadis, 2005), networks or collaboration (Syson and Perks, 2004). However, such contributions did generally not apply a processual perspective which is important since requirements for NSD respectively their characteristics may differ in different stages of the corresponding process (Blazevic and Lievens, 2008).…”

Definição de características críticas na implementação de serviços customizados em massa

“…O'Shaughnessy e O'Shaughnessy (2009) entenderam a customização do serviço como uma forma de desenvolver a competitividade, captando o cliente de forma definitiva. Para Gottfridsson (2010), a customização do serviço ocorre na medida em que as organizações projetam o serviço, através da utilização de sistemas business-to-consumer (B2C), sendo essa uma parte do processo de criação do serviço. Para Buffington (2011), a customização do serviço é uma forma de segmentação de mercado que deriva do fornecimento em massa de um determinado produto.…”

The Research on Hotel Customization Capability Influence Mechanism Based on Biological Double Helix Gene

“…Mass Customization emerged in the 1990s, it is not only a modern production mode which is the low cost, high efficiency way to satisfy customer personalized need, and gradually become competitive strategy [5], Qi Guo-ning put forward 4 customization types [6] which including order sale, order assembly, order manufacture and order design according to customer order separation point. Customized strategic goal is to give users the participation and priority option [7][8], and "transforms the uncertain market needs to the enterprise competitive advantage resources" [9].…”