Servitization and deservitization: Overview, concepts, and definitions

By Christian Kowalkowski, Heiko Gebauer, Bart Kamp, Glenn C. Parry. 2017

477 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The topic of servitization has generated a considerable body of research and many conferences, as well as industry engagement. Yet, despite the extensive literature associated with this now-mature discipline, there is no broad-based consensus on the core concepts and definitions deployed by servitization scholars, and both terminology and usage often seem ambiguous. This paper examines challenges related to service growth strategies, as well as strategies involving deservitization or a retreat from service offers. Showing that these strategies have been pursued for more than fifty years, clarification is sought here by framing the corresponding processes and proposing definitions for four core terms: servitization, service infusion, deservitization and service dilution. It becomes clear that in focusing on the organizational change entailed by these processes, future research must elucidate “softer” issues such as leadership and business logic.

Subfields: Cultural Studies, Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ceab7fc60908db96e1bb95da2cb83a7e6f99fcb

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Citations in the corpus

Navigating disruptive crises through service-led growth: The impact of COVID-19 on Italian manufacturing firms (2020, background): “Servitization refers to a firm's transition from a product-centric business logic, focusing on selling products, to a more service-oriented business logic that focuses on facilitating customer value creation through the provision of advanced services and solutions that better fulfill customers' spec”
Relational governance strategies for advanced service provision: Multiple paths to superior financial performance in servitization (2019, background): “However, in practice, manufacturers that add more services are likely to face significant challenges – namely, the service paradox – as they try to capitalize on advanced service innovation under varying market conditions (Kowalkowski et al., 2017; Gebauer et al., 2005).”
Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review (2019, unknown): “…2016) x (Hughes 2017) x (Isaksson, Hallstedt, and Öhrwall Rönnbäck 2018) x (Jensen and Remmen 2017) x (Jin et al. 2014) x (Kölsch et al. 2017) x (Kowalkowski et al. 2017) x (Kuo and Smith 2018) x (A. Q. Li and Found 2017) x (Liao et al. 2017) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al. 2018a) x (Lopes de…”
Digital Twin in the IoT Context: A Survey on Technical Features, Scenarios, and Architectural Models (2020, background): “Servitization is a term and a set of technical definitions and methods that are very interesting to a broad industry and business community [182].”
Industry 4.0: a supply chain innovation perspective (2020, background): “The traditional transaction-based business architecture that involves selling a product to customers corresponds to a product-centric approach (Kowalkowski et al. 2017).”
The role of digital technologies for the service transformation of industrial companies (2018, methodology): “In particular, we refer to Kowalkowski et al. (2015) to describe the strategic trajectories of service transformation, while the three DTs are positioned in relation to the Data-Information-”