Service characteristics and dimensions as a foundation for service development

Licentiatavhandling, 2025

Environmental sustainability is one of today’s grand societal challenges. Services have been identified as an important element in the journey towards increased environmental sustainability, as they can decouple economic growth from resource use. Servitization - the refocus in manufacturing firms from
providing products to meeting customer needs with services - allows incentives between firms and customers to align. Extant literature states that providing services requires a substantial shift in capabilities and mindset for manufacturing firms as service development and provision requires a
different logic than product development and sales. However, what this mindset shift is about more precisely, what types of services there are and how these can be described and configured has not been clarified and made actionable for managers and employees. There is little agreement about the
definition of services and what their fundamental characteristics are, and there is confusion surrounding categories of service offerings and an identified need for a common language in servitization. The purpose of this licentiate thesis is therefore twofold. First, theoretically to investigate the servitization
and service literature on service characteristics and classifications and second, to propose a practically useful way to address the mindset and vocabulary shift and provide the common language needed for manufacturing organizations embarking on a servitization journey.
The research has been conducted through two studies in two empirical contexts: a multiple case variance study on household waste logistics services and an interactive research process study with one case company in the energy sector. These contexts, both of which have their roots in public services,
have had limited focus on the development of new services but are currently undergoing transformations where services play a growing role in achieving energy efficiency and sustainability goals.
The findings of the thesis are that an understanding of the essence of services - the service mindset - along with an ability to configure, describe, analyze and discuss service offers, facilitates new service development and thereby servitization, in two important and mutually strengthening ways. Firstly, it is
proposed that essential service characteristics to focus on when shifting the mindset from products to services are: (perceived) variability through (an) interaction (process). It is considered fundamental to see the service delivery as part of an ambition to interact with the customer and thereby (i) give the customer a tailored service, or at least an impression of variability based on the interaction, combined with (ii) learn more on unmet customer needs as a basis for the development of new services. Secondly, the introduction of several clearly defined, distinguishing and mutually exclusive dimensions to classify services against enables managers and employees to jointly and precisely describe and configure service offers and through interaction bring clarity on customer requirements and needs.
The two research contexts being on the outskirts of their respective theory areas are waste logistics being after-use rather than in-use and energy provision not being based on equipment manufacturing.
These contexts enabled the research to revisit assumptions in service as well as servitization literature
and make theoretical contributions.