Paper info

SHAPING MARKETS FOR SERVITIZATION

Kai Inga Basner, Thomas Frandsen and Jawwad Z. Raja

The paper was published at the 34th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2018.

We explore how product-service combinations emanating from a servitization strategy are qualified and how such qualification may create demand and, in turn, shape markets. We depart from much of the conventional thinking in the extant literature where there is a tendency to assume that demand and, consequently, markets for servitized offerings exist by default. To address this matter, we explore product-service qualification processes within a global organization providing industrial equipment. In order to do so, an in-depth exploratory empirical case study approach is adopted. Findings suggest that demand for servitized offerings, rather than occurring as a matter of course, is something that companies can actively create in the course of qualifying such new servitized offerings. It is this demand for such servitized offerings that then shapes a company’s existing product markets into markets for productservice combinations. We aim to contribute by showing in detail how such qualification of servitized offerings unfolds, both internally and externally of an organization, and how it may be leveraged in order to create demand and thus shape markets for servitization.