Novelty-focussed document mapping to identify new service opportunities

Successful innovation in services is considered a key factor for organisational sustainability. However, existing customer- and expert-centric approaches are becoming time-consuming and labour-intensive as the number and complexity of services increase. To counter this, an instrument for service opportunity analysis based on quantitative data and systematic processes is proposed in line with the notions of service engineering. At the heart of the suggested approach is text mining to extract the meanings of service documents and the local outlier factor to identify novel services based on quantitative indicators. A case study of mobile services is exemplified. The suggested approach promotes consensus building for promising service opportunities and enhances the efficiency of the fuzzy front-end stages of new service development.     

跨企业供应链管理系统的过程模型分析

集成并协调供应链中各成员的Web服务可以使虚拟企业获得很高的效率,本文重点讨论跨企业供应链管理系统的建模问题。在分析跨企业过程的服务集成面临的相关问题的基础上,引入了面向对象的设计理念,详细阐述了过程模型的服务接口、服务活动、占位符和服务包装器四类服务模型原语。     

Testing of service concepts

Faced with mounting competitive pressures, many companies are attempting to raise their profile in the market by offering new services. As a result, far greater attention has been accorded in the last few years to new service development and service engineering by researchers and businesses alike. However, if the standard suggestions for developing new services are considered it is conspicuous that testing of development results has been largely neglected in the past. This article describes how service testing can be realised in practice and presents a possible approach for simulating services with the help of virtual reality and service theatre.     

The Rise of Crowd Logistics: A New Way to Co‐Create Logistics Value

Patterned on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, a new crowd practice has emerged in recent years: crowd logistics. In this paper, we propose a first conceptualization of this growing phenomenon. Crowd logistics is a novel way of providing logistics services that taps into the dormant logistics resources and capabilities of individuals, using mobile applications and web‐based platforms. Although crowd logistics has been widely discussed in the business world, it has not yet been the subject of any academic publication. Following an exploratory case study approach, we review the websites of 57 crowd logistics initiatives around the world and highlight the main distinctive characteristics of crowd logistics, as compared to traditional business logistics. We introduce a segmented analysis in which crowd logistics solutions are classified according to four types of service offered. Finally, we introduce six theoretical propositions on the future development of crowd logistics. At a theoretical level, our findings contribute to enriching the service‐dominant logic perspective in the logistics field by conceptualizing the crowd as a co‐creator of logistics value. At a managerial level, our findings contribute to identifying which types of crowd logistics services are more likely to threaten or disrupt traditional business.     

When are strategic orientations beneficial for collaborative service innovation?

Despite the importance of collaborative innovation, the existing literature tends to be somewhat vague in identifying when strategic orientations are beneficial for service innovation between a focal firm and its business partners. The purpose of this study is to examine the relative effects of four strategic orientations (market, service, interaction, and learning) on collaborative service innovation performance, while considering the contextual factor of service offerings (basic installed base, maintenance, operational, and professional). Results based on survey data from 362 paired B2B firms show that learning orientation has the strongest effect on collaborative service innovation performance, and is the most effective for basic installed base services and maintenance services. In contrast, interaction orientation best supports those firms with operational services, while market and service orientations are more effective for professional services. Managers are advised to consider alternative strategic orientations individually aligned with service offerings to achieve desired collaborative service innovation outcomes.     

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

Purpose: As part of service infusion, manufacturers use services to differentiate their products and provide growth. Although several attempts have been made to classify manufacturers' service strategies and offerings, most have been based on small purposive samples. The purpose of this article is to create a generic typology of manufacturers' service strategies.

Methodology/approach: The unit of analysis was the manufacturer or strategic business unit. The data collection was based on a survey of 145 B2B manufacturers in the United Kingdom.

Findings: Three categories of service offerings were identified: product-attached services, operations services on own products, and vendor independent operations services. These categories are used to specify three generic service strategies: Services Doubters, for whom services are not a strong differentiator with no focus on any category of service offerings; Services Pragmatists, for whom product-attached services are a key differentiator; Services Enthusiasts, for whom services are both a product differentiator and an enabler of growth, with all three categories of service offerings important.

Research implications: Whereas prior studies tend to use the concepts of service strategies and categories of service offerings interchangeably, we find empirical support for the importance of making a clear distinction between the two concepts.

Practical implications: Manufacturers can be classified according to their services strategies. For Services Doubters service infusion is unlikely to be an appropriate approach to creating differentiation. For Services Pragmatists services play a crucial role in creating product differentiation. Services Enthusiasts use services to both differentiate their own products and also develop services-led growth.

Originality/value/contribution: The paper exposes an ambiguity in the extant literature, with a manufacturer's categories of service offerings used as proxies for service strategies. A new typology of service strategies is presented based on categories of service offerings, which provides insight into how manufacturers infuse services.     

Requirements for developing green services

Innovating with services and integrating sustainability in economics are research issues of increasing importance. Green services are a recently relevant type in service research combining both fields. The potential seen in ecologically sustainable services is high, while a comprehensive approach in new service development is still missing. Based on an empirical study, a set of requirements for developing green services is introduced, considering specific criteria of ecological sustainability.     

Goods retailers and service providers: comparative analysis of web site marketing communications

Retailers may engage in a range of marketing communications on their web sites. Our content analysis of web sites for 152 Fortune 500 retailers showed that more profitable retailers were more likely to use company specific, shareholder, web specific and customer service elements. We also found differences in the use of advertising, shareholder, company specific and web specific elements among goods, financial and services retailers.     

Examination of Credence and Noncredence Service Advertisement Strategies in the United States and India

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the differences in advertising strategies of services marketers in two culturally distinct markets by classifying services on the basis of search, experience, and credence attributes. A content analysis of 221 service print ads revealed that the type of service serves an important role for using appeal and service quality cues in service ads. In the case of credence services, ads in India are more likely to contain a reliability dimension of the service quality, and ads in the United States are more likely to utilize responsiveness cues.     

Modeling e-Negotiation Processes for a Service Oriented Architecture

Most of today's e-marketplaces support a single negotiation protocol. The protocol is usually built into the e-marketplace infrastructure, therefore if a new one is introduced then a time consuming and complex process of implementing it takes place. Moreover, participants in the e-marketplace need to adapt their interfaces to the new protocol, especially if they use automated tools to interact with the e-marketplace. This paper reports on a model-driven approach and a framework for rapid and user-friendly development of configurable service oriented e-negotiation systems. We believe that a formal specification of negotiation protocols and their separation from the market infrastructure that implements them is a step towards configurable e-negotiation systems. The protocols are graphically designed for the e-marketplace then mapped into web service orchestrations. Participants use automated negotiation systems to interact with the e-marketplace. These systems are generated based on the negotiation protocol implemented on the e-marketplace. A declarative language is used to specify negotiation strategies and tactics. We propose an algorithm to map Statechart models of negotiation protocols into web service orchestrations and we report on the current implementation of our framework.     

Developing the service template process: From measurement to agendas for improvement

Traditional survey-based measures of service quality are argued to be problematic when reflecting individual services and turning measurement into action. This paper reviews developments to an alternative measurement approach, the Service Template Process, and offers an extension to it. The extended process appears able to measure service users' and deliverers' perceptions of service quality independently. It also enables participants to jointly agree an agenda for quality improvement. The extended process is evaluated in four service situations. The paper concludes with an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the process in comparison with more traditional approaches to measuring service quality.     

Developing smart service concepts: morphological analysis using a Novelty-Quality map

Among many techniques for generating new service ideas, morphological analysis has been used due to the advantage of decomposing the system into dimensions and shapes and bringing creative results in the process of recombining them. However, with the rise of smart service systems, the determination of dimensions and shapes has become a critical problem, particularly as both their structure and components become complex. This research focuses on a data-driven approach by incorporating mobile app service documents to increase objectivity and diversity in the construction of a morphology matrix. To this end, firstly, the novelty-quality map is developed to identify innovative data based on quantitative indicators. Secondly, morphological analysis is employed along with experts’ judgment in order to generate new smart service concepts. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are shown based on a comparative analysis with conventional approaches and real services through a case study of smart home.     

Conceptualizing and managing service supply chains

The supply chain management (SCM) literature is dominated by studies in industrial markets and studies that deal with the supply chains of manufactured goods. This paper develops a framework for conceptualizing and managing the supply chains of services. The few studies that deal with services' supply chains either focus on a particular business service sector or they adopt an unvaried approach to the management of different service supply chains. The paper draws insights from the existing frameworks for SCM and takes into account the peculiar characteristics for the production and delivery of services across several service industries. Based on the analysis of several processes, areas of concern for supply chain managers are identified, and a research agenda for services SCM phenomena is proposed.     

What Makes Consumers Willing to Pay for Online Services? Discovering Consumer Opinions and Determinant Factors on Charged Online Services

ABSTRACT

Recently, more and more service e-businesses began to charge their consumers on the services provided to assure revenues for their survival. An understanding of consumer opinions on and behaviors toward the charged online services is critical to successful business models for service e-business. Through survey data analyses, the exploratory study reported herein attempts to discover consumer opinions and behaviors regarding charged online services. The findings of this study would contribute effectively to the formulation and implementation of sustainable business models for e-businesses in the service sector.     

A supply chain management framework for services

While services represent the largest sector of the global economy, 86.8% in the United States, most supply chain management (SCM) research is focused on product flows. Executives in manufacturing firms have benefited from frameworks created to implement SCM processes, but this is not the case for their counterparts in service companies. The two most cited SCM frameworks for services have methodological and conceptual deficiencies. Drawing upon the service-dominant logic of marketing and using an empirical research approach, we developed supply chain structure maps for nine service firms. Our findings indicate that the supply chain structure maps of service companies are comparable to those in the product-based literature, which supports the service-dominant logic. Then, we identified the six key processes that constitute a framework to manage service supply chains. The customer relationship management and the supplier relationship management processes form the critical links in the supply chain, and the other four processes are coordinated through this linkage. The SCM framework for services provides direction for executives in service firms who need to increase cross-functional integration within their firms and with other members of the supply chain. For academics, 12 avenues for future research are identified.     

Key service drivers for high-tech service brand equity: The mediating role of overall service quality and perceived value

Abstract

This study investigates how different aspects of service quality could have effects on overall perception of service quality, perceived value, and service brand equity. Based on a survey of active users of mobile telecommunications services in Taiwan, we obtained the following findings. First, we found that empathy, network quality, reliability, and assurance, but not tangibles and responsiveness, have a significant effect on service quality and value perception. Second, the effect of overall service quality on brand equity is partially mediated by perceived value. Third, overall service quality has differential mediation effects on the relationships between specific service quality dimensions and perceived value. Finally, empathy and network quality have direct effects on brand equity. For managers, our study suggests the importance of identifying key service drivers for building strong service brand for high-tech service firms. The identification of key service drivers could then enable these firms to make strategic decisions on services investments. It also demonstrates the importance of the humanisation of technology for services firms. This study is original in that it explores the path from specific services qualities to service brand equity.     

Development of a service continance model with IT service antecedents

This study make provides service marketers, particularly those delivering information technology (IT) related service, with insight to the factors that consumers use when evaluating IT services. We develop a service continuance model that includes the antecedents of the consumer׳s decision to continue using information technology (IT) related services in a B2C service environment. Using data from the smart phone service consumers, a covariance-based structural equation modeling analysis is used to test the research model. Results from our empirical study suggest that the association between service usefulness and service continuation intention is fully mediated by service satisfaction. Though both system-service quality and customer-service quality are positively associated with service satisfaction, consumers of IT related services attach greater importance to system-service quality than to custom service quality. Likewise, the indirect path to service continuation intention is stronger in system-service quality than in customer-service quality. Our findings have practical implication for growing market share in IT related services by recognizing the importance of system-service quality in technology service delivery.     

A framework for innovative service design

Drawing on research from design science, marketing, and service science, our paper provides an integrated framework for evaluating and directing innovative service design. The main goal of our review is to highlight the strengths of existing frameworks and to suggest how they can be enhanced in combination with design science principles. Based on our review, we propose a new framework for the design of innovative services that integrates several key paradigmatic approaches and identifies fundamental open research questions. Our approach is unique as it combines three service disciplines, namely services marketing, service science, and design science, and provides a new framework that describes step by step the procedure that needs to be taken and the conditions that need to be met for developing innovative services. We believe that providing such a framework is a valuable addition to the literature.     

面向O2O的Web服务描述与建模

针对现有服务描述只考虑网上Web服务功能与质量属性,忽视用户网下服务需求的弊端.基于O2O环境中用户对网上服务和网下服务的综合需求,这篇文章对传统的Web服务描述进行了扩展,构建网上网下服务描述模型,设计了网上服务和网下服务的FQoS和QoS指标体系,定义了QoS属性的量化公式,建立了服务资源本体元模型,实现了对服务资源全面整体的描述,解决了网上服务和网下服务功能质量协同的问题.具有较强的理论意义和现实意义.