Daniela Andreini

Understanding Customer Needs to Engineer Product-Service Systems

Starting from the 90s, an increasing number of companies have been starting to move from a product-centric perspective towards Product-Service-System (PSS). In this context, suitable models, methods and tools to collect, engineer and embed in a single solution all the knowledge that meets or exceeds people’s emotional needs and expectations are required. Despite that, only few authors have proposed methodologies that can be easily adopted by industrial companies to design and engineer a product-service solution starting from the customer needs. Thus, this paper focuses on the customer needs analysis and aims at proposing a methodology to support companies in identifying customer needs, representing the starting point to the engineering and/or reengineering of PSS offering and the related delivery processes. An industrial case study in ABB S.p.A. has been carried out in order to test the methodology.

Business Model Innovation: From Systematic Literature Review to Future Research Directions

This book presents a systematic literature review of 156 published papers on business model innovation (BMI). The aim is to identify and integrate the different theoretical perspectives, analytical levels, and empirical contexts in order to deepen understanding of this complex phenomenon. The authors conduct an inductive thematic analysis based on an informal ontological classification that identifies 56 key themes. Within each theme, discussion focuses on thematic patterns, potential inconsistencies and debates, and future directions and opportunities for research. The book makes a number of significant contributions to the field. First, it offers a deeper understanding of the evolution of research on BMI through an ontological map that identifies the key thematic areas in the literature. Second, a multilevel model is developed that clarifies the concept of BMI by identifying its drivers, contingencies, and outcomes. Third, the authors identify clear and specific directions for further research and offer suggestions on research design, creating an informative road map for the future. The book will be of value both to scholars and researchers and to practitioners.

From a service-dominant logic to a good-dominant logic

Purpose – Productization, defined as the standardization of the production and delivery processes of services, is an approach that many service companies undertake, moving from relationship-intensive customer projects toward selling specific standardized offerings. In contrast to research on servitization, little in-depth research is available on the effects of this change of approach on the buyer-seller relationship. The purpose of this paper is to narrow this gap by providing evidence of the outcomes of productization in a corporate bank which has been serving Tier 1 customers for more than 15 years. Design/methodology/approach – Using the IMP Group approach, this research identifies how productization affects buyer-seller relationships. In total, 37 key informant interviews were conducted on both sides of the buyer-seller relationship. Findings – This research identified direct effects of productization relevant to buyer-seller relationships, and as many indirect effects through internal organizational...

Trust, information asymmetry and professional service online referral agents

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the intermediation of an online agent in the relationship between prospective clients and professional service providers affects individual purchasing processes and decisions, and satisfaction with the professional service provider once the commercial transaction is concluded. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the integrated trust-technology acceptance model, modified to include two additional variables to take into account of the specificities of the context investigated – users’ perceived reduction of information asymmetry and satisfaction with the professional service provider – a research framework is developed and tested with a research design combining a decision tree procedure with structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis. Participants are 188 users of an Italian website which incorporates an online agent that refers notaries to prospective clients. Findings Decisions to purchase professional services brokered by online agents depend upon trust in the agent, and users’ perceptions of the agent’s ability to reduce information asymmetry, as well as its perceived usefulness. Online agents for professional services can be effective as well as efficient: users who bought the service from an agent-referred notary had higher levels of satisfaction with their professional service provider than users who purchased the service from a different notary. Originality/value This is the first empirical effort to investigate the effects of online agents in the specific context of professional service purchasing. The uniqueness of the research context permitted identification of a new type of online agent, the “double-sided online referral agent”.

The cross-effects of sponsorship in non-professional sports communities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cross-effects of on-site sponsorship on online sponsorship effectiveness in communities. The research evaluates how members’ commitment to a sports-oriented community and attitude to brands providing sponsorship developed through sponsorship on-site, and sponsor-community fit, influence the effectiveness of online sponsorship measured as the intention to purchase the same brands online through sponsoring banners displayed on the community web site. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a web-survey from a self-selected sample of 272 respondents belonging to non-professional sports communities. By drawing on the principal tenets of the theory of reasoned action, the authors developed a theoretical framework and tested it through a structural equation model to evaluate the role of attitude to sponsor brands developed through sponsorship on-site, and its antecedents, on the intention to purchase the same brands online through spons...

Systematic Literature Review

The first chapter of this book introduces the importance of studying business model innovation (BMI), the methodology we applied to study the subject, and specific statistics about the literature published in academic and practice-oriented journals in the last 15 years. Specifically, this chapter offers an overview of the processes followed for our systematic literature review (SLR) and the rigorous protocol that includes the three-stage procedure (i.e., planning, execution, and reporting) suggested by Tranfield et al. (Br J Manag 14:207–222, 2003). Gathering the most influential pieces on SLRs, this chapter also offers some hints for conducting a successful SLR and illustrates the benefits associated with doing so. In addition, this chapter describes the thematic and the informal ontological classification we adopted to analyze the 156 papers included in our systematic literature review. Thus, the first section of this chapter defines what is meant by an SLR. The second section offers an overview of the tasks of an SLR. The other sections present the process followed for the thematic and ontological analyses that are central to this work. The final section provides some statistics on the 156 papers included in our SLR, underlining specific information about the journals that published the articles, the methodological approaches applied in the papers, the industries included in the studies, the geographical contexts, and the disciplines that contributed to the understanding of BMI.

B2B vs. B2C: an empirical attempt to bridge the gap

If B2B and B2C should be considered distinct domains, is an ongoing debate in marketing research and practice. Recent contributions in the IMP group tried to solve this century old dichotomy. With this paper the authors contribute to this cultural debate showing the importance that product attachment plays in the B2B context. Through an exploratory survey on a sample of 514 Italian truck drivers the authors give evidences of the existence of a diffused feeling of product attachment. In a second study, an experiential phenomenological analysis suggests that the extended self is a suitable framework to describe truck possession and usage. This intimate relationship between user and product in a B2B context, has interesting implication for inter and intra- organizational processes and networks, as discussed in the final part of the paper.

Multilevel Analysis of Business Model Innovation

This chapter introduces a multilevel analysis of BMI that flows from the thematic and ontological analyses of the 156 papers included in the systematic literature review. Five different levels of analysis emerged from the studies: individual (e.g., entrepreneurs and employees); team (e.g., top management); firm (e.g. companies and organizations), network (e.g., partnerships and consortia), and the firm’s institutional environment (e.g., industry, market, sector, or society). These levels of analysis are discussed in order to improve our understanding of BMI and to stimulate future research. The tables and the multilevel issues examined in this chapter reveal that most existing knowledge on BMI is concentrated on a single level of analysis at a time, moreover the majority of the papers use the firm as the level of investigation. Accordingly, this chapter contributes to the development of the BMI literature, highlighting for each level of analysis, the related research gaps, and offering specific suggestions—a road map for future research—to address each of these knowledge gaps.

Conclusions and Research Agenda

This chapter concludes our work by summarizing all the results derived from the analyses illustrated and discussed in the previous chapters. This chapter contributes to the knowledge of business model innovation (BMI) in three ways. First, we review the integrative framework related to the drivers, contingencies, and outcomes of BMI that was complemented with a deep analysis of theoretical perspectives and future research. Second, we propose an integrated multilevel (individual, team, firm, network and institutional) and multidisciplinary (strategic management, organizational studies, marketing, entrepreneurship, and practice-oriented) framework for BMI. Third, these perspectives of analysis facilitate the development of a comprehensive research agenda that can stimulate future studies on BMI from different perspectives, such as, a deeper BMI conceptualization, a wider and mixed usage of research methods, more integrative studies able to integrate level of analysis and a multidisciplinary understanding of BMI. These future contributions can improve the knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of BMI, and particularly of its drivers, outcomes, and contingencies.

BMI from the Perspective of Five Disciplines

This chapter categorizes the 156 papers included in our systematic analysis according to the disciplines to which they belong. Our thematic and ontological analyses identified five different disciplines dealing with BMI: strategic management, organizational studies, marketing, and entrepreneurship. In addition to these, we have the practice-oriented group of papers. This chapter is organized as follows, each section considers one of the five different disciplines and first analyzes how BMI is treated in it by reviewing the main research questions, the theoretical perspectives, and the methodologies employed in the papers considered in our systematic literature review. Specifically, we will discuss the papers most cited in each field and their contribution to the knowledge on BMI. Finally, the chapter presents the categorization of the papers according to their main perspectives and levels of analysis (illustrated in the fourth chapter of this book), providing a specific research agenda for future research.