The Role of Soft Factors in Implementing a Service-Oriented Strategy in Industrial Marketing Companies

Homburg, Christian; Faßnacht, Martin; Guenther, Christof

doi:10.1300/j033v10n02_03

Cited by 159 publications

(244 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Some manufacturers can be described as Services Doubters which are not undertaking service infusion to any great extent, supporting Lay et al (2010). This study suggests that some of these companies have set up independent service business units, although the implementation of the strategy might not have been successful (Gebauer, Fleisch, and Friedli 2005;Homburg, Fassnacht, and Guenther 2003), hence the lack of focus on any category of service offerings. Services…”

Section: Figure 2 Herementioning

confidence: 92%

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

Raddats

Kowalkowski

2014

Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing

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Section: Figure 2 Herementioning

confidence: 92%

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

Raddats

Kowalkowski

2014

Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing

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“…Acquiring loyal customers, enhancing the quality of customer relationship, and increasing intensity of customer interactions through service differentiation helps strengthen the relationship between customer centricity and business performance (Homburg et al, 2003;Kalwani and Narayandas, 1995;Reichheld, 1996;Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).…”

Section: Development Of Hypotheses For the Role Of Service Differentimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, most researchers study the phenomenon of service differentiation in isolation from other firm activities (Homburg et al, 2003;Neu and Brown, 2005). In so doing, they neglect the interaction of service differentiation with other antecedents that may affect success, such as customer centricity and innovativeness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive advantage through service differentiation by manufacturing companies

Gebauer

Gustafsson

Witell

2011

Journal of Business Research

316

217

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This paper examines the relationship among the complexity of customer needs, customer centricity, innovativeness, service differentiation, and business performance within the context of companies that have made a service transition from pure goods providers to service providers. A survey of 332 manufacturing companies provides the basis for the empirical investigation. One key finding is that a strong emphasis on service differentiation can lead to a manufacturing firm's strategies for customer centricity being less sensitive to increasingly complex customer needs, which can increase a firm's payoff for customer centricity. In contrast, the payoff from innovativeness appears to be higher if the firm focuses its resources on either product or service innovation; that is, a dual focus does not work well.This paper discusses the implications of these findings for researchers and managers.

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“…Thus a model combining-but evaluating individually-the effects of core operant resources, such as instrumental service and interpersonal service, and augmented operant resources, such as value mindset, should offer useful insights into the seller resources that influence relationship satisfaction. Second, for hybrid goods-services companies formulating a service-oriented strategy, we need to distinguish the effect of tangible, hard factors such as services scope, from that of soft factors such as the seller's mindset (Homburg et al 2003). Consequently, as illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, for hybrid goods-services companies formulating a service-oriented strategy, we need to distinguish the effect of tangible, hard factors such as services scope, from that of soft factors such as the seller's mindset (Homburg et al 2003). Consequently, as illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

B2B relationship calculus: quantifying resource effects in service-dominant logic

deLeon

Chatterjee²

2015

J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci.

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Increasingly, knowledgeable business-to-business (B2B) customers and evolving customer needs are leading to seismic shifts in vendor-client interactions. Across industries, sellers are changing their business models from a simple goods orientation to a hybrid goods-services model, placing greater emphasis on delivering complete customer solutions. In such an environment, companies must find ways to prioritize investments in resource development. The servicedominant (S-D) logic framework offers significant insights into this challenge; however, these effects have not been tested quantitatively. This study addresses that gap, examining the influence of various seller resources on buyer satisfaction. An empirical analysis of buying organizations that purchased and implemented business intelligence systems finds that Baugmented^operant resources that the buyers ascribe to the software's sellers-resources that go above and beyond expectations-are the most significant predictors of both successful technology assimilation and overall customer relationship quality. In particular, an augmented operant resource reflecting a seller's ability to see value creation opportunities from the buyer's perspective (value mindset) has up to three times the effect on relationship satisfaction as Bcore^operant resources such as product-specific expertise or basic interpersonal service skills. These results can help sellers prioritize resource investments. Lusch 2004, 2008b) casts this question in terms of developing and applying Bresources^to create value. According to S-D logic, value is not intrinsic to the seller's Boperand resources^or tangible offerings such as physical products or software coupled with training or integration. Rather, sellers deliver value to buyers by applying operant resources such as skills and knowledge to the operand resources. Vargo and Lusch (2008a) maintain that the valuemaximizing application of resources-more than the specific goods-services offering mix-should be a company's primary marketing concern. To date, though, little quantitative analysis has been conducted to test the impact of these resources on value. Research has focused instead on classification systems (Madhavaram and Hunt 2008), consumer behavior (Arnould 2005), and conceptual integration into existing knowledge domains such as innovation theory (Michel et al. 2008). Recent qualitative studies have highlighted the importance of sellers customizing offerings and communicating value in customer-specific terms (Tuli et al. 2007;Ulaga and Reinartz 2011). But, again, the impact of such capabilities has yet to be assessed through quantitative analysis. Sci. (2017) 45:402-427 DOI 10.1007 Given the paradigmatic shift proposed by S-D logic, the first objective of our study is to quantitatively assess the extent to which both operant and operand resources affect value. We measure value in terms of project outcomes and customer relationship satisfaction. To do this we quantify relative effects both within operant resources, and betwe...

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The Role of Soft Factors in Implementing a Service-Oriented Strategy in Industrial Marketing Companies

Cited by 159 publications

References 48 publications

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

Competitive advantage through service differentiation by manufacturing companies

B2B relationship calculus: quantifying resource effects in service-dominant logic

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