Osmo Mattila

Non-industrial Private Forestry Service Markets in a Flux: Results from a Qualitative Analysis on Finland

Previous research on European forestry service markets is scarce and mainly focused on analysing external market environment and modelling of timber selling behaviour of non-industrial forest owners (NIPFs). In this study, we aim to create a broader understanding about business perspectives of forestry service markets covering the whole array of market and institutional based services offered to the NIPFs in case of Finland. The more specific empirical objective of the paper is to describe market drivers and underlying challenges in existing and potential service business models based on the concepts of service-dominant logic and dynamic capabilities. Using a qualitative approach and 22 thematic expert interviews in service organisations, we strive to analyse the drivers and opportunities for creating new services within the NIPF market and also build insight in possible barriers for new service value creation. According to our results, the ongoing structural changes offer new opportunities to change traditional mindsets and search for new types of offerings that support the renewal of this traditional forestry sector. As one of the major barriers for new innovations we identified the dominant role of established organisations securing their current positions, mainly driven by the forest industry timber procurement needs. From a managerial perspective, the changing institutional base of the current service organisations may facilitate new innovative business start-ups in addition to enhancing the strategic capabilities and competitiveness of the established firms in Finnish forestry sector.

Exploring the future use of forests: perceptions from non-industrial private forest owners in Finland

ABSTRACT The transformation of the forest sector toward a bioeconomy calls for finding new sources of competitive advantage for the whole sector to retain its future viability. Non-industrial private forest owners are an important group of actors in the Finnish forest-based sector, as they supply 80% of industrial roundwood and control numerous other tangible and intangible forest-based ecosystem services. Our study analyzes forest owner views on the future use of forests in Finland, their perceptions on the evolving sectorial interlinkages and the position of the forest sector now and in the future bioeconomy. The data were collected in two phases: through telephone interviews of forest owners (n = 278) and four focus group (FG) discussions (n = 17), and were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The interviews showed that forest owners consider the highest potential for strengthening the sector toward bioeconomy to come from collaboration with energy and construction businesses. During the FG phase, we identified new possibilities founded on forest-based recreational services, cooperation with nature-based tourism and in increasing value-added wood products. In total, forest owners as a high-involvement group emphasized future value creation to be based upon forest ecosystem services and in diversifying the utilization of forests beyond the dominant raw material-driven mindset.

Scaling Consultative Selling with Virtual Reality: Design and Evaluation of Digitally Enhanced Services

Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies allow creation of powerful customer experiences and illustrative demonstrations especially in use cases that benefit from spatial visualizations. Our study focuses on the natural resource management sector and digitalizing of consultative selling process. More specifically, we look at how to improve customer engagement with the use of virtual reality (VR) and thus digitally scale consultative selling. In this process, a VR application is used to demonstrate various management operations and their economic results. Design research methodology is applied to a pre-development phase and three application development iterations between 2016 and 2018. Data consists of user interviews and video observations (N = 129) during various development iterations and three application development plans. The results show that VR offers an emotionally engaging and illustrative tool in consultative selling. Further, it opens a novel way for interaction between the salesperson and customer and possibilities to scale consultative selling digitally, emphasizing the role of trust.