Today, we identify service articles published in Marketing, Management, Operations, Productions, Information Systems, and Practitioner-Oriented Journals in the last months.
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Welden, R., M. Haenlein, K. Hewett, K. M. Smith and J. Hulland (2025): Quest for insights: Leveraging data from the video game ecosystem in marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (4204), pp.1-22
Over the past decade, video games have dramatically risen in popularity, and marketers have started recognizing the research opportunities video games provide. However, much of the current research in the gaming space focuses on the video game experiences of individual consumers, whereas other participants in the video game ecosystem are often ignored. In addition, research frequently uses traditional data collection and analysis techniques that do not adequately account for the unique features of the data generated within this ecosystem. In this article, using a framework based on service-dominant logic and the customer journey, we identify six distinct pillars embedded in the video game ecosystem and describe the types of data generated through interactions among them. We then present three challenges with data gathering and analysis that arise from the co-creation of value within the video game ecosystem. Finally, we outline adaptations marketers can make to address these challenges and present future research directions to help access and analyze data generated throughout the video game ecosystem.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01074-1 [Google]
Delcourt, C., D. D. Gremler and D. A. Greer (2025): Breaking bad news: How frontline employees cope with bad news disclosure to customers, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, (4205), pp.1-24
Disclosing bad news to customers during service encounters is an unavoidable, demanding task that can generate significant stress for frontline employees (FLEs). Despite the pervasiveness of bad news disclosure in service contexts, prior research has not explicitly examined how FLEs prepare for or optimize the delivery of bad news, whether to reduce their own work stress or to mitigate its negative impact on customers. Using multidisciplinary literature and depth interviews pertaining to 192 bad news disclosures, this research (1) delineates the concept of bad news disclosure and the types of bad news disclosed in service settings; (2) draws on coping theory to develop an integrative framework of how bad news disclosure unfolds in service encounters and how it affects customer-, employee-, and organization-related outcomes; (3) offers a protocol that FLEs can use to prepare for bad news disclosure and soften the blow for customers; and (4) proposes a research agenda to clarify how service organizations and FLEs should manage bad news disclosure.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01079-w [Google]
Cayla, J. and B. Auriacombe (2025): Emotional Energy: When Customer Interactions Energize Service Employees, Journal of Marketing, 89(4206), pp.1-18
Existing literature has concluded that employees who regularly interact with customers often find this central aspect of their work emotionally draining. But what if some customer interactions could emotionally regenerate service employees? This ethnographic research demonstrates that several factors influence emotional energy in service interactions, including staff copresence with customers, mutual focus, shared mood, and barriers to outsiders. In addition, service employees’ experience of autonomy and status in interactions plays an important role in influencing their emotional energy. Based on these insights, this study advances a framework for service organizations to manage a crucial asset: the emotional energy of frontline service employees.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00222429241260637 [Google]
Weber, N. R., A. Marchand and R. E. Kunz (2024): Price and delay decisions for sequentially released products: The case of transactional streaming services, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(4207), pp.687-702
This research examines how the adjustment of price and delay in the sequential distribution of simultaneously available digital products can maximize revenues. In this dynamic digital market, consumers can choose between different versions of movies that are available after their initial theatrical release. An analysis of weekly sales data of 1,397 movies with more than 50,000 observations, in a random effect control function generalized least square panel model, reveals an inverted U-shaped delay effect. That is, too short and too long delays after the initial cinematic release are both suboptimal. Price and delay interact positively with each other too, such that if the delay is too short, the negative influence of the price becomes amplified. By testing the effects of multiple other success factors, some of which have not been investigated before, this research also reveals pertinent, novel interactions of these variables with price and delay. Finally, to encourage the practical application of these comprehensive results, the authors present an interactive dashboard that managers can use to simulate the optimal price and delay for the different product versions.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.04.003 [Google]
Zhang, W., E. L. Slade and E. Pantano (2024): Humanlike service robots: A systematic literature review and research agenda, Psychology & Marketing, 41(4208), pp.3157-3181
Humanlike robots are increasingly employed to provide frontline services. They are frequently designed with stereotypically feminine or masculine humanlike features which affect or bias consumer behavior in service encounters. This systematic review of 118 peer‐reviewed journal papers aims to comprehensively capture the current status of the field and identify important research gaps requiring further investigation. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses protocol, a comprehensive framework is developed to conceptualize the process of customer interactions with humanlike service robots, depicting how humanlike service robots influence consumer behavior. Specifically, we identify interaction antecedents, consumer processing factors, outcomes of the interactions, and strengthening/attenuating factors. Based on the framework, the review concludes by identifying issues that future research should seek to solve to contribute to the field. This paper provides a deep understanding of service robot anthropomorphism in marketing and consumer research and proposes a future research agenda to advance knowledge of the field.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22099 [Google]
Vorobeva, D., D. C. Pinto, H. González‐Jiménez and N. António (2025): Bragging About Valuable Resources? The Dual Effect of Companies’ AI and Human Self‐Promotion, Psychology & Marketing, (4209), pp.1
ABSTRACT As companies actively invest in self‐promotion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) empowered services to sustain their competitive advantage, there is a growing potential for such promotional activities to backfire. Bridging signaling theory with the resource‐based view, this research reveals that companies’ self‐promotion of AI resources can reduce customers’ willingness to engage with AI‐based (vs. human‐based) services. Four studies, including text mining and experiments, demonstrate that companies’ self‐promotion of AI‐based resources has a detrimental effect on willingness to engage, and concurrently perceived as exaggeration. In contrast, companies’ self‐promotion about human‐related resources yields beneficial outcomes, since such promotional signals contribute to the enhancement of human capital. The findings suggest that self‐discrepancy and trust are the key underlying factors driving the effects as customers may experience a discrepancy between their expectations of human‐like service interactions and actual AI capabilities. Additionally, findings reveal the moderating effect of honest (vs. self‐promotional) framing on the relationship between service type (AI vs. human) and willingness to engage. Customer perceptions of AI appear less influenced by presentation style compared to perceptions of human resources. This research provides valuable insights into how customers respond to companies’ self‐promotion of AI resources and emphasizes the need for promotional alignment with customers’ expectations about AI.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22198 [Google]
Su, L., X. Wang, Z. Lin and S. Xiao (2025): From impression to expression: How warmth and competence in relaxing and challenging activities shape pleasure and eWOM, Psychology & Marketing, 42(4210), pp.64-79
This research investigates how aligning service providers’ warmth and competence with the nature of leisure activities (relaxing vs. challenging) influences pleasure and electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) sharing. Through a series of five studies, including secondary data analysis (Study 1), scenario‐based experiments (Studies 2a, 3, 4, and 5), and observation of actual eWOM behavior (Study 2b), we demonstrate that the alignment between service judgments and activity type (i.e., warmth in relaxing activities and competence in challenging activities) enhances positive eWOM sharing, with this effect being mediated by the pleasure derived from the service experience. Our findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of the cognitive and affective antecedents of eWOM. We extend the stereotype content model to the eWOM research, identifying activity type as a novel boundary condition. We recommend that managers tailor their impression management strategies to the type of activity offered. For relaxing activities, emphasize warmth‐related attributes, while for challenging activities, highlight competence‐related attributes—both approaches can enhance customer pleasure and encourage positive eWOM sharing.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.22113 [Google]
Zhang, Z., L. Liu and Y. Yang (2025): Monetizing Showrooming, Production & Operations Management, 34(4211), pp.226-241
This paper explores how a strategic B&M retailer monetizes its showrooming service and how this affects a brand’s incentive to use the service, consumer surplus, and social welfare. We build a stylized model in which the retailer decides the showrooming fee, and the brand decides whether to pay the fee to showcase its product in the retailer’s offline channel in addition to its own online channel and separately sets the optimal prices for both channels. Consumers who face the uncertainty of the product value are assumed to have different levels of hassle costs of buying from the online channel and choosing which channel to visit. Our equilibrium analyses show that the brand has an incentive to use the retailer’s offline channel to achieve an intended market segmentation based on hassle cost levels. Interestingly, the retailer’s optimal profit and the brand’s optimal prices both increase in search cost. Showrooming decreases consumer surplus when the value of a good match is relatively low or high, and a “Win–Win–Win–Win” situation in which all stakeholders (the retailer, the brand, consumers, and the social planner) benefit from monetizing the showrooming service may exist. Our paper also explores the role of a price-matching policy and service costs incurred by the retailer. Relevant managerial implications are discussed.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241279558 [Google]
Xu, J., L. Duan, B. Shou and J. Huang (2025): Information Freshness in Service Queues With Strategic Customers, Production & Operations Management, 34(4212), pp.205-225
We examine a scenario in which a service provider updates its queue length information to customers at a specific frequency. Customers decide whether to join the queue based on the most recent update. Our objective is to determine the optimal updating frequency that benefits both the service provider and customers. Using a two-dimensional continuous-time Markov process, we model the actual and announced queue length processes. By proving the identical distributions of these two processes under a Poisson updating scheme, we derive closed-form solutions for customers’ utility functions. Our findings demonstrate that customers adopt a generalized mixed-threshold strategy at equilibrium, and their certainty about whether to join the queue or balk does not always increase with fresher information. Furthermore, we reveal that due to customers’ different sensitivities to information freshness, system performance metrics such as throughput and total customer utility exhibit non-monotonic behavior in response to the updating frequency. Consequently, providing fresher information does not necessarily lead to improved system performance. To address this, we propose algorithms to determine the optimal updating frequency for each system performance metric and identify the conditions under which different updating frequencies are optimal. We demonstrate that any positive updating frequency can achieve customer utility no worse than the no-information system. Additionally, in systems with high customer arrival rates, updating with a positive updating frequency can improve throughput. Furthermore, we prove conditions under which a positive and finite updating frequency can yield higher throughput and total customer utility compared to real-time information systems.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241281913 [Google]
Jiang, S., M. Hu, Y. J. Jin, L. Qiu and Y. Duan (2025): Impact of Technical Support and Information Provision on Patient No-show Behavior, Production & Operations Management, 34(4213), pp.79-98
Patient no-shows pose a significant challenge in healthcare operations, disrupting appointment schedules and affecting overall efficiency. Effectively addressing the challenge of reducing patient no-shows is crucial for outpatient service management. This study evaluates how the design of appointment systems affects patient no-show behavior. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we analyze the effects of two appointment system update events—technical support and information provision—at a Chinese hospital. Our analysis reveals that technical support and information provision are associated with average reductions of 22.40% and 10.91%, respectively. To investigate the mechanisms behind these effects, we conduct a randomized controlled experiment with 233 participants. Our findings reveal that perceived effort and credibility mediate the relationship between information provision and patient no-shows. However, for technical support, only perceived credibility acts as a mediator. This study provides valuable insights for healthcare operations, offering design recommendations to address no-show behavior in hospital appointment systems.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10591478241276135 [Google]
Ramdas, K. and A. Sungu (2024): The Digital Lives of the Poor: Entertainment Traps and Information Isolation, Management Science, 70(4214), pp.9089-9100
Smartphones have enabled the delivery of life-improving information services to base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) consumers. However, little is known about how the poor interact with the digital world. Through a novel app we developed to investigate real-time smartphone usage, we identify an unnoticed barrier to digital information access by the poor—data shortages. By analyzing over 9.4 million minutes of smartphone usage data from 929 residents of a Mumbai settlement, we find that entertainment consumes 61% of their phone time. Our data reveal that under universally adopted monthly data plans, low-income individuals binge on YouTube and social media, resulting in data shortages and information isolation in the late-plan period. We offer a practical operational solution to this problem—shorter data-replenishment cycles—which serve as a commitment device to curb binge usage. We randomly assign participants to a “capped plan”—with daily data usage caps—or a standard (monthly) plan. Assignment to the capped plan increases late-plan access of invites to health camps sent via WhatsApp, increases attendance at these in-person camps by 27%, and reduces social media binge usage. Most participants (particularly those with low self-control and high fear of missing out) prefer the capped plan, even when costlier—clearly signaling demand. Because capped plans are inherently cheaper to provide, offering them could enable providers to increase BOP customer value and expand access. Our results suggest an opportunity to amplify the impact of life-improving services targeted at the poor by leveraging users’ interactions with smartphone technology. This paper was accepted by Victor Martínez de Albéniz, operations management. Funding: Financial support from The Wheeler Institute for Business & Development is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.4989.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.4989 [Google]
Niu, Y., J. Wu, S. Jiang and Z. Jiang (2025): The Bullwhip Effect in Servitized Manufacturers, Management Science, 71(4215), pp.1-20
The shift to a service-oriented economy has driven traditional product-oriented manufacturing firms to integrate various services into their businesses. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on how manufacturers’ service offerings impact demand variability and intrafirm bullwhip effects. Through “bag-of-words” text mining on 10-K filings of U.S.-listed manufacturing firms, we propose a novel measurement to identify annual services offered. We validate the measurement’s statistical and economic significance and verify its consistency with the results obtained using the large language model (i.e., GPT-4). Services are categorized as complementing product sales (e.g., maintenance and repair) or substituting product sales entirely (e.g., machine hours). Utilizing difference-in-difference techniques, we find robust evidence that manufacturers’ service offerings reduce the bullwhip effect in two steps: basic complementing services decrease demand variability, whereas advanced substituting services mitigate intrafirm bullwhip. Moreover, servitization mainly minimizes demand variability through information channels, whereas increased production efficiency decreases intrafirm bullwhip. Our findings contribute to understanding manufacturers’ business model innovations by demonstrating that servitization can smooth demand and mitigate intrafirm bullwhip. This paper was accepted by Karan Girotra, operations management. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71931007, 72091214] and General Research Fund by Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant 14505320]. Supplemental Material: The data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01026.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01026 [Google]
Nageswaran, L., E. H. Hwang and S.-H. Cho (2025): Offline Returns for Online Retailers via Partnership, Management Science, 71(4216), pp.279-297
Online shoppers often prefer to return items to stores (i.e., “offline return”) rather than mail them back. We study a new business practice, return partnership, wherein online retailers partner with store retailers to offer offline returns. We seek to identify when return partnerships benefit both the store and online retailers. Customers choose between the online and store channels for their purchase and decide whether, and through which channel, to return an online purchase if needed. We find that store and online retailers who offer differentiated products have incentives to partner, as in the case of the return partnership between Everlane and Cost Plus World Market (formed via Happy Returns—a service provider that connects online retailers with store retailers). In this case, the online retailer’s benefit from the cost savings achieved by consolidating shipments of returned items from stores outweighs the loss associated with a high return rate. We show that, contrary to initial intuition, return partnerships may also feature retailers who offer similar products, as in the case of Amazon-Kohl’s. In this case, online customers’ migration to offline returns ensures a store retailer’s incentive to partner. However, it limits the incentive of an online retailer when the added convenience of an offline return induces more returns of online purchases. Thus, we caution that with limited differentiation in product offerings, store visits should not be too convenient for a partnership to form. This paper was accepted by Jay Swaminathan, operations management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01291.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01291 [Google]
Lobel, I. and S. Martin (2025): Detours in Shared Rides, Management Science, 71(4217), pp.1716-1736
Detours are considered key for the efficient operation of a shared rides service, but they are also a major pain point for consumers of such services. This paper studies the relationship between the value generated by shared rides and the detours they create for riders. We establish a limit on the sum of value and detour, and we prove that this leads to a tight bound on the Pareto frontier of values and detours in a general setting with an arbitrary number of requests. We explicitly compute the Pareto frontier for one family of city topologies and construct it via simulation for several more networks, including one based on ride-sharing data from commute hours in Manhattan. We find that average detours are usually small, even in low-demand-density settings. We also find that by carefully choosing the match objective, detours can be reduced with a relatively small impact on values and that the density of ride requests is far more important than detours for the effective operations of a shared rides service. In response, we propose that platforms implement a two-product version of shared rides and limit the worst-case detours of its users. This paper was accepted by Hamid Nazerzadeh, data science. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.03125.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.03125 [Google]
Hall, J., R. Kerschbamer, D. Neururer and E. Skoog (2025): Uncovering Sophisticated Discrimination with the Help of Credence Goods Markups: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment, Management Science, 71(4218), pp.694-707
Credence goods, such as repair and healthcare services, are characterized by profound information asymmetries between less-informed customers and better-informed expert sellers. These information asymmetries open the door for fraudulent behavior on the seller side. In a preregistered natural field experiment, we vary in one dimension the seller’s perception of whether the service is an ordinary or a credence good service and in the second dimension whether the customer is a member of a minority or a member of the majority. This allows us to measure the size of the induced credence goods markup and to address the question whether it interacts systematically with discrimination. We document the existence of a large credence goods markup, on average. Moreover, we find that members of the minority pay a sizeable discriminatory markup if the good is perceived as a credence good but not if it is perceived as an ordinary good. Our results show that sellers engage in sophisticated discrimination where informational asymmetries are used to hide discriminatory (fraudulent) behavior. With the help of an ex post survey, we derive a possible explanation for our results. This paper was accepted by Maria Claire Villeval, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: Financial support was provided by the Austrian Science Fund [Special Research Area Grant SFB F63 and Grants P26901 and P27912]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02666.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02666 [Google]
Gulen, H., D. Li, R. H. Peters and M. Zekhnini (2025): Intangible Capital in Factor Models, Management Science, 71(4219), pp.1756-1778
The transition from a traditional manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge- and service-based economy over recent decades resulted in a considerable rise in intangible capital, most of which is not reported on companies’ balance sheets. As a result, balance sheet-based valuation ratios, investment measures, and other firm characteristics that do not incorporate off-balance sheet (OBS) intangible capital suffer from significant measurement error problems. We incorporate a new measure of OBS intangible capital into firm characteristics, such as book to market, investment, and profitability, to address these measurement errors. These OBS intangible adjustments improve the performance of the Fama–French three- and five-factor models and the q-factor model, especially during recent decades. We further find that the value factor is no longer redundant in these empirical factor models. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: The authors are grateful for financial support from the 2019 EDHEC Scientific Beta “Advanced ESG & Factor Investing” Research Chair. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01261.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01261 [Google]
Estrada Rodriguez, A., R. Ibrahim and D. Zhan (2025): On Customer (Dis-)Honesty in Unobservable Queues: The Role of Lying Aversion, Management Science, 71(4220), pp.844-860
Queues where people misreport their private information to access service faster are everywhere. Motivated by the prevalence of such behavior in practice, we construct a queueing-game-theoretic model where customers make strategic claims to reduce their waiting time and where the manager decides on the static scheduling policy based on those claims to minimize the expected delay cost in the system. We develop a lying-aversion model where customers incur both delay and lying costs. We run controlled experiments to validate our modeling assumptions regarding customer misreporting behavior. In particular, we find that people do incur lying costs, and we find that their misreporting behavior does not depend on changes in waiting times but rather, on the scheduling parameters. Based on the validated lying-aversion model, we study the equilibrium that arises in our game. We find that under certain conditions, the optimal policy is to use an honor policy where service priority is given according to customer claims. We also find that it may be optimal to incentivize more honesty by means of an upgrading policy where some customers who claim to not deserve priority are upgraded to the priority queue. We find that the upgrading policy deviates from the celebrated cµ rule. This paper was accepted by Elena Katok, operations management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.04036.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.04036 [Google]
Buell, R. W. and M. Choi (2025): Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency, Management Science, 71(4221), pp.1335-1355
Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run engagement. Although we find tradeoff transparency to have an insignificant effect on acquisition rates, customers who were shown each offering’s tradeoffs selected different products than those who were not. Moreover, prospective customers who experienced transparency and subsequently chose to open an account went on to exhibit higher-quality service relationships over time. Monthly spending was 9.9% higher and cancellation rates were 20.5% lower among those who experienced transparency into each offering’s tradeoffs. Increased product use and retention accrued disproportionately to customers with prior category experience: more-experienced customers who were provided transparency spent 19.2% more on a monthly basis and were 33.7% less likely to defect after nine months. Importantly, we find that these gains in engagement and retention do not come at the expense of customers’ financial well-being: the probability of making late payments was reduced among customers who experienced transparency. We further find that the positive effects of tradeoff transparency on engagement and retention were attenuated in the presence of a promotion that provided financial incentives to choose particular offerings. Taken together, these results suggest that providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs may be an effective strategy for informing customer choices, leading to better outcomes for customers and firms alike. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. Funding: Funding for this research, apart from the costs Commonwealth Bank of Australia internally incurred to support the experiment, was provided by Harvard Business School. R. W. Buell has received compensation from Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the past for executive education teaching. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.4985.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.4985 [Google]
Ater, I. and A. Shany (2025): Exercising Market Power Without Using Prices: Service Time in Online Grocery, Management Science, 71(4222), pp.366-389
This paper studies how online grocers use service time to respond to local competition and demand conditions when prices are uniformly set at the national level. Using comprehensive data collected twice a week over three years from 172 Israeli local markets, we show that an online grocer sets identical prices in all markets. By contrast, service time is shorter in more competitive markets and on low-demand days. Next, we exploit regional and temporal variation in entry decisions to examine how the incumbent adjusts its service time when new online grocers enter the market. The incumbent’s service time falls significantly on low-demand days and in monopolistic markets. This decrease begins shortly before entry and is greater when the entrant poses a larger competitive threat. On high-demand days and in competitive markets we do not find a significant change in service time in the months surrounding entry. Our findings suggest that firms use service time to exercise their local market power when prices are unresponsive and that operational considerations affect the extent to which they respond. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. Funding: Financial support by Eli Hurvitz Institute of Strategic Management, The Henry Crown Institute of Business Research in Israel, The Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel Ltd., Coller Foundation, and the Israeli Science Foundation [Grant 568/17] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01820.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01820 [Google]
Heirati, N., S. C. Thornton, A. Leischnig and S. C. Henneberg (2025): Capability configurations for successful advanced servitization, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 45(4223), pp.329-354
Purpose: Advanced servitization is the process that involves the combination of different services that facilitate both the use of a product and customer operations. Although servitization has emerged as a frequent strategy for manufacturers to differentiate themselves from the competition, its implementation can pose major challenges and may not always result in superior firm performance. Consequently, successful advanced servitization may require specific organizational capabilities to unleash performance-enhancing effects. To date, little is known about how to effectively configure advanced servitization to achieve such performance gains. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a fit theory perspective and using a configurational approach, we examine the interplay between servitization, organizational capabilities, contextual factors and financial performance. Specifically, we focus on advanced servitization and assess its necessity and sufficiency for achieving high financial performance. In addition, we study how the alignment of servitization approaches with organizational capabilities and contextual factors affects financial performance. We analyze data from 151 manufacturers in an emerging economy using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Findings: Our findings indicate that advanced servitization is sufficient, but not necessary for high financial performance. In addition, the findings indicate that the alignment of servitization approaches with specific service-related capabilities unfolds complementarity effects that contribute to achieving high financial performance for manufacturers with different firm size and competitive intensity. The findings indicate three configurations that may serve as templates for managers to orchestrate resource allocation and successfully deploy advanced servitization. Originality/value: Our study advances the servitization literature by further illuminating advanced servitization as a more complex servitization process. We show how high-performing manufacturers align servitization and organizational capabilities across different contexts, and thus provide design choices for managers in configuring servitization.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-03-2023-0226 [Google]
