Developing and validating a multi-dimensional scale for operationalizing industrial service offering
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a new scale for measuring the scope (i.e. breadth and depth) of industrial service offering.
Design/methodology/approach
The scale and its constructs are developed by combining the key insights from prior literature and practitioners gained through expert interviews; validating the constructs by 3 item-construct validation rounds with 9 academic experts; and by testing and further revising the scale, with a sample of 91 manufacturing firms.
Findings
The distinct contribution of the study is the construction and validation of a new multi-dimensional scale for operationalizing the scope of industrial service offering. In addition, the identified service categories (i.e. pre-sales services, product support services, product life-cycle services, R&D services and operational services) extend the current literature on service typologies.
Research limitations/implications
The data are somewhat biased toward small- and medium-sized industrial firms. Hence, the development of the measurement in the context of large industrial firms provides one fruitful avenue for further research.
Practical implications
For managers of industrial firms, the identified service categories provide novel insight on how to develop, bundle and commercialize industrial services to their varying customer segments.
Originality/value
This study develops a multi-dimensional, fine-grained, statistical and relationship-level scale for measuring the scope of industrial service business. Moreover, this study tests and further develops the scale with quantitative empirical data.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Professor Arto Rajala (University of Vaasa) and Assistant Professor Olli-Pekka Kauppila (Aalto University, School of Business) for their valuable comments on the early version of this article. The support from the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes, SystemI, Futis and S4Fleet programs) and the Academy of Finland (SME Networks & Growth) is also appreciated. In addition, the authors acknowledge financial support by VINNOVA, which had funded work within FASTE Excellence Center and Industrial Product-Service Development for Global Markets at Luleå University of Technology.
Citation
Partanen, J., Kohtamäki, M., Parida, V. and Wincent, J. (2017), "Developing and validating a multi-dimensional scale for operationalizing industrial service offering", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 295-309. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-08-2016-0178
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited