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This study aims to explore the innovative strategies of business model of the free-to-fee switch, the relationship between the business model innovation and customer knowledge and further develop a conceptual model.

This study adopts a multiple case study method with abductive research logic, following the replication logic to select samples. A total of eight outstanding companies with altogether 312 free-to-fee switch events were selected from 1998 to 2021.

A strategic matrix with four innovative business models for the free-to-fee switch is generated. The parallelism between the models and customer knowledge orientations is also found. Further, the study develops the conceptual model regarding customer knowledge orientation as a key mediation.

The study highlights the conceptualization definition of customer knowledge orientation and its mediation effect to the business model innovation of free-to-fee switch, which is a new issue compared with previous research. Furthermore, it reveals that there exists organizational ambidexterity, which brings a new definition of customer knowledge orientation.

This study suggests how to integrate customer knowledge orientations to support the marketing process of the business model of free-to-fee switch. It also proposes a specific mechanism to conduct the free-to-fee switch with the introduction of four innovative strategic models and eight evolutional paths.

This study creatively proposes the strategic matrix and the conceptual model of business model innovation of free-to-fee switch. Moreover, a new conceptual definition of customer knowledge orientation is specified.

This study aims to explore how manufacturing firms master customer lock-in through value creation by servitization innovation strategies from the perspective of asset specificity.

A multiple case study with triangulation fashion is adopted to identify servitization innovation strategies. Several manufacturing firms were investigated, which are distributed in different positions of the value chain. Content analysis and abductive approaches are adopted to analyze the data. Moreover, an in-depth interview and participatory observation were conducted to refine the analysis results.

This study identified four different focusing points of servitization operations. Based on these, the paper further induces an innovative servitization strategy matrix of customer lock-in, concerning communion, intellectual, existential and insubstantial strategies. Furthermore, a conceptual model of customer lock-in by servitization innovation from the perspective of asset specificity is elaborated. It is suggested that companies can use tangible or intangible resources by sharing or storing operations to create servitization value.

This study theoretically proposes a conceptual model to extend servitization innovation as an intangible asset and adopt the new perspective of asset specificity to illustrate the value creation in servitization to generate customer lock-in.

The paper proposes customer involvement can be considered an organization-level construct of knowledge creation in the new process development. Specifically, the paper evaluates three distinct organizational practices as knowledge antecedents – competitor orientation, social network and internal coordination – that can facilitate the adoption of customer involvement in the process innovation development.

The paper empirically tests this theory for 2,000 firms that are stratification sampled from a population of 33,844 Taiwanese firms, and a data set of 170 valid questionnaires is collected. The questionnaire was mainly modified from a Kim and Kim (2010) measure which was designed based on the 3rd edition of the Oslo Manual OECD/Eurostat 2005. The concept of customer involvement in new service development proposed by Alam (2002) was also applied to the questionnaire.

(1) The antecedents of customer involvement, which include competitor orientation, external social networks and internal coordination, function as a determinant to nourish customer involvement. (2) Customer involvement significantly positively mediates the relationship between knowledge antecedents and new process performance. (3) Customer involvement is a crucial knowledge creation for improving the new process innovation performance in manufacturing firms.

Two basic tenets of theory building serve as the foundation of the model in this paper. First, research on customer involvement is augmented by showing that customer involvement can emerge as a shared perception among organizational members that is distinct from individual-level involvement. Moreover, customer involvement in process innovation can help firms manage their knowledge and further enhance firm performance. Second, the knowledge management model provides a key lens through which researchers can take a process-oriented view that focuses on customer involvement as a unique capability that firms can develop in process innovation.