Search results

Firms transforming from a product supplier into a solution provider need to develop entirely new organizational capabilities or re-configure existing ones. This paper aims to conceptualize solution business fitness (SBF) as a construct that captures comprehensively the capabilities necessary for a firm to operate successfully in solution business and investigates how the construct can be measured.

Based on a conceptualization of solution-specific capabilities and SBF, the development of the SBF measurement model followed a three-step procedure: domain specification and conceptual development, qualitative pre-study and quantitative pre-study. The SBF measurement model and its relevance were studied in a large scale longitudinal study using survey data from firm representatives, as well as archival data about the turnover and profitability development of the respective solution providers.

The study empirically validates solution-business-specific capabilities as antecedents of firm performance and shows how different business logics applied by firms give capabilities different importance and impact.

Managerially, firms can use the developed measurement tool to assess their current SBF and define the desired target status. When improving the SBF, managers should pay special attention to the business logic of their firm, as the required capabilities are context-dependent.

The study is the first to conceptualize and measure SBF and to empirically investigate the moderating role of business logic on the importance of the concept and its elements.

The purpose of this paper is to refine an agenda concerning the theory–praxis gap to develop a foundation for a research tradition.

The paper synthesizes and builds on the suggestions in commentary articles by Kohli (2017), Leeflang (2017) and Möller (2017).

The authors develop a research agenda consisting of the following issues: the need for a systemic view of business practice; the need for innovative and meaningful theoretical understanding; the need to identify conditions and approaches for collaborative theorizing; to further define and instruct the abductive approach; and to explore pragmatic realism to ensure both practical outcomes and truthful theories.

These five issues are a step towards developing a theory–praxis research tradition.

The aim of the paper is to address the widening theory-praxis gap in marketing. The authors propose that one viable solution to this challenge is involving practitioners in research processes as active, reflective and empowered participants. Most extant discussions addressing the inclusion of managers as partners in theorizing restrain themselves to an “if” question, arguing whether or not it is possible to create sufficiently rigorous knowledge in collaboration with practitioners. This leaves the “how” question unanswered, i.e. how should such gap-bridging research be conducted in practice.

Based on a literature review of collaborative theorizing processes, the authors develop a conceptual framework highlighting the main research design decisions when theorizing with managers. The use of the framework is illustrated with four research program examples.

Most accounts of theorizing with managers use – explicitly or implicitly – abduction as the main mode of inference. In addition to this philosophical commonality, our literature review identified 12 themes that should be considered when designing collaborative research processes. The four illustrative examples indicate that theorizing with managers is an effective way of producing and socializing both academically sound and managerially relevant knowledge. On the other hand, collaborative theorizing processes are time-consuming and studies using abductive reasoning may be more challenging to publish in top-tier journals.

This paper makes two contributions. First, the authors go beyond the extensive academic literature which provides a plethora of explanations and ideas for potential remedies for bridging the theory-praxis gap by offering a detailed description how one particular solution, theorizing with managers, unfolds in practice. Second, the authors ground collaborative theorizing processes in the philosophy of science and put abduction forward as a common nominator for such studies.

The extant service ecosystem literature rarely addresses the dark side of actors’ agency, which hinders further development of the service-dominant (S-D) logic, particularly with regard to understanding service ecosystem dynamics. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to delineate the dark-side facets of actors’ agency that adversely affect actor-to-actor relationships and resource integration, in the context of shaping service ecosystems.

With abductive reasoning, this study seeks to reorient results from prior literature in accordance with empirical findings. The empirical data pertain to 21 firms in Finland, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden, representing various industries, sizes, international reach, technologies, ownership forms and histories.

The dark side of agency emerges as an actor’s deliberate attempts to influence a service ecosystem to achieve self-interested benefits, despite understanding that these actions inhibit other actors from providing service and can be detrimental to other actors and the ecosystem. The findings also reveal three facets of the dark side: conflict, ambiguity and opportunism. The process of shaping service ecosystems is prone to systematic conflict, ambiguous and opportunistic behaviours occurring between the focal actors’ ecosystem and other ecosystems vying for the same set of resources.

This study advances the S-D logic by addressing the crucial role of agency in a dialectical relationship with institutions and structures. Service-for-service exchanges can take place in asymmetric, ambiguous, opportunistic situations driven by self-interested motives.

Processes aimed at shaping service ecosystems can demonstrate the dark sides of actors’ agency, related to conflict, ambiguity or opportunism. Managers interested in shaping strategies should be prepared for this outcome.

A service ecosystem perspective requires policy makers and regulators to reconsider their role in shaping processes. No “invisible hand” guides markets to equilibrium, so they should be more proactive in shaping ecosystems, rather than merely fixing market failures.

This research offers the first S-D logic-based investigation into the dark side of actors’ agency in shaping service ecosystems.

To locate the underlying service logic of each of three leading texts and to examine points of variance.

A critical review and comparative analysis of the main tenets of each text.

Each text combines a service perspective and a relationship perspective to marketing management. Each author seems to favour a service perspective on some issues but at other times a relationship perspective. This apparent epistemological pluralism is resolvable and a pathway to synthesis suggested.

What stands out in a critical reading of these texts is the provocation offered to readers to go beyond the limits of services marketing orthodoxy. In this there are implications for pedagogical development.

Gives insights into the current debate on development of a more broadly based service‐dominant logic of marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how, taking customer relationships as the unit of analysis, the heterogeneity of customer relationship performance influences the heterogeneity of firm performance, and how firms can balance the heterogeneity of customers, customer relationships, and customer portfolios by differentiated business models.

The approach to the topic is one of theoretical analysis and conceptual development.

Value capture is defined as the discounted present value of all future economic profit from the relationship. Three sources of value capture heterogeneity are identified: the customer, the relationship with the customer, and the interdependence between customers in a customer base. Relationship performance can be improved by investing in business model differentiation, in order to facilitate controlled adaptation to specific customer relationships and/or customer portfolios. Firms have to manage parallel business models and a central capability is the ability to create internal fit between the elements of a specific business model.

The research presented relates to business‐to‐business customer relationships. Some of the conceptual thinking will not be applicable in consumer relationships.

A firm should have an optimum mix of customer relationships in its customer base, in relation to firm goals and strategy. Management needs to recognize the heterogeneity of customer relationship performance, and manage customer portfolios accordingly. In order to deal with the heterogeneity, it may be necessary to manage parallel business models. This will necessitate new capabilities, such as customer insight generation, account management, modularized production platforms, and relationship performance control.

For a scholarly audience the paper contributes to the discussion on how marketing improves firm performance by assuming responsibility for increasing firms' market value. For a practitioner audience it offers ideas for genuinely customer‐centric management.

Addresses customer‐relationship economic issues, more specifically the link between service quality and profitability from a relationship marketing and management perspective. In this perspective the task of marketing is not only to establish customer relationships, but also to maintain and enhance them in order to improve customer profitability. In the service quality literature higher quality is assumed to lead to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty and this drives customer profitability. The framework highlights factors that, in addition to service quality and customer satisfaction, influence the links between service quality and profitability. Also discusses aspects of improving the profitability of relationships, such as enhancing relationship revenues through higher degrees of patronage concentration, and reducing relationship cost by changing the episode configuration of customer relationships.

A common thread in the modern marketing theories, such as service‐dominant logic and viable systems approach, is the notion value co‐creation: the locus of value creation is no longer perceived to reside within firm boundaries but value is considered to be co‐created among various actors within the networked market. The evolution of value creation, from value creation by the manufacturing firm to value co‐creation in a network, necessitates a corresponding change in the concepts used to depict value creation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate business models as a broader conceptualization of value co‐creation that captures this change.

The topic is approached by a combination of literature review and interactive research, including interactions with managers from 12 international companies.

Business models are defined as configurations of 12 interrelated elements, covering market, offering, operational, and management viewpoints. The effectiveness of a business model in value co‐creation is defined by the internal configurational fit between all business model elements and the external configurational fit between provider's and customers' business models.

The paper contributes to the understanding on value co‐creation by providing a conceptualization of the business model construct depicting value co‐creation in a network. Of the 12 companies providing the empirical data, ten are within business‐to‐business which limits the applicability to business in general. Further, the paper indicates that within a single firm multiple parallel business models are in use.

A firm can radically improve value co‐creation by designing business models that have a high degree of internal and external configurational fit.

The originality and value of this paper lies in its analysis and discussion of co‐creation of value within a business model.