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Despite data being a hot topic, little is known about how data can be successfully used in interactions in business-to-business relationships, specifically in the boundary spanning contexts of firms working together to use data and create value. Hence, this study aims to investigate the boundary spanning context of data-driven customer value projects to understand the outcomes of such activities, including the types of value created, how resulting value is shared between the interacting firms, the types of capabilities required for firms to deliver value from data and in what contexts different outcomes are created and different capabilities required.

Three abductive case studies were undertaken with firms from different business-to-business domains. Data were coded in NVivo and interpreted using template analysis and cross-case comparison. Findings were sense checked with the case study companies and other practitioners for accuracy, relevance and resonance.

The findings expand our understanding of firm interactions when extracting value from data, and this study presents 15 outcomes of value created by the firms in the study. This study illustrates the complexity and intertwined nature of the process of value creation, which emphasises the need to understand distinct types of outcomes of value creation and how they benefit the firms involved. This study goes beyond this by categorising these outcomes as unilateral (one actor benefits), developmental (one actor benefits from the other) or bilateral (both actors benefit).

This research is exploratory in nature. This study provides a basis for further exploration of how firm interactions surrounding the implementation of data-driven customer value projects can benefit the firms involved and offers some transferable knowledge which is of particular relevance to practitioners.

This research contributes to the understanding of data-driven customer-focused projects and offers some practical management tools. The identification of outcomes helps define project goals and helps connect these goals to strategy. The organisation of outcomes into themes and contexts helps managers allocate appropriate human resources to oversee projects, mitigating the impacts of a current lack of talent in this area. Additionally, using the findings of this research, firms can develop specific capabilities to exploit the project outcomes and the opportunities such projects provide. The findings can also be used to enhance relationships between firms and their customers, providing customer value.

This work builds on research that explores the creation of value from data and how value is created in boundary spanning contexts. This study expands existing work by providing greater insight into the mechanics and outcomes of value creation and by providing specific examples of value created. This study also offers some recommendations of capability requirements for firms undertaking such work.

While customer experience (CE) is recognized as a critical determinant of business success, both academics and managers are yet to find a means to gain a comprehensive understanding of CE cost-effectively. The authors argue that the application of relevant AI technology could help address this challenge. Employing interactively prompted narrative storytelling, and the authors investigate the effectiveness of sentiment analysis (SA) on extracting valuable CE insights from primary qualitative data generated via chatbot interviews.

Drawing on a granular and semantically clear framework for studying CE feelings, an artificial intelligence (AI) augmented chatbot was designed. The chatbot interviewed a crowdsourced sample of consumers about their recalled service experience feelings. By combining free-text and closed-ended questions, the authors were able to compare extracted sentiment polarities against established measurement scales and empirically validate our novel approach.

The authors demonstrate that SA can effectively extract CE feelings from primary chatbot data. This findings also suggest that further enhancement in accuracy can be achieved via improvements in the interplay between the chatbot interviewer and SA extraction algorithms.

The proposed customer-centric approach can help service companies to study and better understand CE feelings in a cost-effective and scalable manner. The AI-augmented chatbots can also help companies to foster immersive and engaging relationships with customers. This study focuses on feelings, warranting further research on AI's value in studying other CE elements.

The unique inquisitive role of AI-infused chatbots in conducting interviews and analyzing data in realtime, offers considerable potential for studying CE and other subjective constructs.

This paper aims to outline the purpose, planning, development and delivery of the “1st Academic-Practitioner Research with Impact workshop: Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Big Data” held at Alliance Manchester Business School on 18th and 19th January 2016, at which four subsequent papers were initially developed.

The paper sets out a summary of the importance and significance of the four papers developed at the workshop and how the co-creative dialogue between managerial practitioners, presenting key problems and issues that they face, and carefully selected teams of academics was facilitated.

To develop richer and more impactful understanding of current problems challenging customer-focused managers, there is a need for more dialogue and engagement between academics and practitioners.

The paper serves as a guideline for developing future workshops that aim at strengthening the links between academia and the business world.

This paper highlights the value of academic–practitioner workshops for focusing academic research on areas of importance for practitioners to generate impact. The innovative format of the workshop and the resulting impactful papers should serve as a call and motivation for future academic–practitioner workshop development.

This paper focusses on the darker side of the dynamics of servitization by exploring the tensions and territoriality that emerge between manufacturers and customers during the servitization process in the oil industry.

The Delphi method is used to explore the perspectives of three management tiers in oil organisations and the manufacturers who work with them. The views of these managers were synthesized over three iterations: semi-structured interviews, a questionnaire and resolution/explanation, where consensus was not obtained.

The findings of the study highlight perceptions of change, resulting tensions and territoriality and the impact of management commitment, resources and strategy. They reveal significant differences between customers and their suppliers and different management levels and highlight territorial behaviour and the negative impact this has on buyer supplier relationships during the implementation of servitization.

Further research is required to explore why there is a variation in understanding and commitment at different managerial levels and the causes of tensions and territoriality.

Servitization is not a “quick fix” and management support is essential. A fundamental element of this planning is to anticipate and plan for tensions and territoriality caused by the disruption servitization creates.

The research provides empirical evidence of tensions and territoriality relating to servitization that potentially can damage supplier–buyer relationships and suggest that there is a darker side to servitization. It also shows that differences in strategic intent across organizations and between different managerial layers impedes to servitization efforts.

This paper aims to investigate the role of servitization intent in the servitization process, and specifically the role dissonance (at an organizational level) in servitization intent can play in creating barriers to the servitization effort. Servitization intent is defined as the desire to achieve a future state of increased servitization.

The research uses elite interviews and secondary data to explore servitization intent and its role during the servitization process. It examines the resistance to change resulting from a misalignment of the executive intent to servitize, and the organizational intent to retain the existing manufacturing business model. By encompassing data from companies representing a significant portion of the total industry (as measured by revenue), the study provides an industry level perspective of servitization intent and alignment.

Servitization intent and three key managerial challenges related to servitization intent that act as barriers to servitization were identified: lack of servitization intent, overcoming the manufacturing mindset associated with the organizational intent and the constraints resulting from managerial experience. Servitization intent and its associated managerial challenges were present at an industry level with consistent findings being shown across the major firms in the industry studied. A number of managerial strategies for overcoming these barriers were identified.

The research focuses on a single industry; the findings, potentially, have application across a broad range of industries.

A key management implication from these findings is the need for a clear understanding of the organizational intent in relation to servitization in addition to the need to bring this organizational intent in alignment with the executives’ servitization intent.

This research makes a contribution by identifying the misalignment between servitization intent in different levels of the organization during the servitization process and the mechanisms that can improve alignment and help effect servitization.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the focal firm perspective of much resource/capability research, identifying how a dyadic perspective facilitates identification of capabilities required for servitization.

Exploratory study consisting of seven dyadic relationships in five sectors.

An additional dimension of capabilities should be recognised; whether they are developed independently or interactively (with another actor). The following examples of interactively developed capabilities are identified: knowledge development, where partners interactively communicate to understand capabilities; service enablement, manufacturers work with suppliers and customers to support delivery of new services; service development, partners interact to optimise performance of existing services; risk management, customers work with manufacturers to manage risks of product acquisition/operation. Six propositions were developed to articulate these findings.

Interactively developed capabilities are created when two or more actors interact to create value. Interactively developed capabilities do not just reside within one firm and, therefore, cannot be a source of competitive advantage for one firm alone. Many of the capabilities required for servitization are interactive, yet have received little research attention. The study does not provide an exhaustive list of interactively developed capabilities, but demonstrates their existence in manufacturer/supplier and manufacturer/customer dyads.

Manufacturers need to understand how to develop capabilities interactively to create competitive advantage and value and identify other actors with whom these capabilities can be developed.

Previous research has focussed on relational capabilities within a focal firm. This study extends existing theories to include interactively developed capabilities. The paper proposes that interactivity is a key dimension of actors’ complementary capabilities.

Digital Service innovation (DSI) plays a fundamental role in the successful transition from product manufacturer or traditional service provider to a provider of digitally-enabled service solutions. Multiple impediments make managing this transformation using digital technologies difficult for firms, their customers and wider ecosystems. Extant knowledge of these digital technology impediments requires synthesizing and mapping.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted. DSI tools and terminology are synthesized via thematic analysis. Subsequently, impediments to DSI for servitization (covering barriers, challenges and tensions) faced by actors across three key innovation phases: strategic planning, design planning and implementation, and four interaction levels (Micro, Meso, Macro-environment, Macro-ecosystem) are mapped via template analysis.

Six impediment categories (external environmental factors, internal firm factors, capabilities, business models and processes, value creation and interaction) encompassing 28 unique impediment types to DSI during servitization are identified. A framework enabling impediment comparison across innovation phases and ecosystem/network interaction levels, revealing that the majority of barriers can be framed as “challenges” was developed.

Whilst literature is emerging relating to digital servitization, there is a lack of research on the role DSI plays in facilitating digital servitization and no comprehensive study of DSI impediments exists. Additionally, consensus around the cross-disciplinary terminologies used is lacking. This study is a structured attempt to map the domain, summarizing the terms, identifying and clarifying impediment categories and providing recommendations for researchers and managers in tackling the latter.

An abundance of literature suggests that organisations adopting a cooperative approach achieve greater rewards than those that act in opposition or isolation. An emerging body of work also highlights the multiple actors involved in servitization. Despite this, in some contexts the benefits of servitization are not apparent. This paper examines business relationships in the oil industry and how they affect levels of servitization.

A mixed method study employing qualitative and quantitative methods was used to fully explore the context. In the quantitative phase, 48 oil industry specialists responded to a scenario based on game theory. This aimed to determine if the relationships between their respective organisations are cooperative or adversarial. Abduction drove a second qualitative phase. This consisted of a series of semi-structured interviews used to explore the servitization level and influence of servitization on relationships and vice versa.

The statistical results suggest that all parties used adversarial strategies despite the publicised intent to work cooperatively. The interviews suggested that increasing (decreasing) servitization could increase (decrease) cooperation and, in turn, value co-creation but revealed nuances to this effect. It also adds to our understanding of the darker side of servitization by illustrating the impact of mimetic isomorphism.

The findings add to understanding of the complex dynamics around servitization by showing that it is only at advanced levels of servitization that cooperative behaviour is observed, and base and intermediate levels result in non-cooperative behaviour and thus illustrate the importance of adopting a multi-actor lens to explore servitization.

This paper aims to examine experiences of low customer power in service interactions and the impact of those experiences on customers’ engagement and disengagement towards a firm. It subsequently identifies how such experiences may affect customers’ wellbeing.

The authors conducted visual elicitation interviews with 30 customers of a range of services. Data were analysed thematically using abductive reasoning.

Low customer power is influenced by several factors perceived by customers as associated with the firm and/or the context of the customer–firm relationship. Results show that low power drives negative customer engagement and may result in behavioural disengagement. Low customer power, negative engagement and disengagement can have negative implications for customers’ eudaimonic (physical and financial) and hedonic wellbeing.

Future studies might explore specific service contexts and power dynamics across service ecosystems and should further analyse the implications of these relationships on firms’ strategic organisational responses.

Firms should monitor customer power and explore means of enhancing the wellbeing of their customers through strategies designed to increase customer power, thus, reducing negative customer engagement and avoiding detrimental impact on customer wellbeing.

This study reframes discussions on low customer power in relation to firms and its impact on firms and customers. It identifies low customer power as a key variable in the study of customer engagement, disengagement and wellbeing.