Supporting SMEs adoption of sustainable Product Service Systems: a holistic design-led framework for creating competitive advantage

This thesis explores effective and contextually appropriate means through which manufacturing SMEs can create competitive advantage through design and sustainable Product Service Systems (PSS). The exploration focuses on how design capabilities can be developed and used in non-design led contexts to drive an effective adoption of sustainable product service systems, creating competitive heterogeneity. A comprehensive review of literature gave understanding of perspectives to competitiveness issues, how organisations have been supported towards PSS, sustainability and design adoption and related challenges. From this review surfaced the need to be cautious of contextual considerations leading to a Delphi study. The purpose of the Delphi study was to identify factors relevant for SMEs in Botswana to embrace sustainable PSS as a competitive business strategy. Priorities from the Delphi study informed a study aimed at exploring competitiveness experiences of SMEs and their perceptions of sustainability and product service systems. Following the position of experts on industries highly prioritised in Botswana s economic diversification agenda, this was done with a specific industry; the leather industry. Possible opportunities of how design can address challenges identified and how PSS and sustainability can open new business opportunities for SMEs were also drawn from the findings. A systems success framework was developed using the main findings. The framework was tested through workshops with 3 SMEs who were also participants in the previous study. Through interactions with designers, the workshops exposed SMEs to design and PSS. Findings from the workshops indicate that through design capabilities SMEs can recognise opportunities and translate them in a service context to differentiated offerings suitable for their various markets. A designerly approach also offered a simplified but holistic process for SMEs to engage in systems thinking

D3.3 Business models report

RECIPROCITY aims to transform European cities into climate-resilient and connected, multimodal nodes for smart and clean mobility. The project's innovative four-stage replication approach is designed to showcase and disseminate best practices for sustainable urban development and mobility. As part of this project, the present business model report (D3.3) provides an overview of innovative urban mobility business models that could be tailored to cities in the RECIPROCITY replication ecosystem. The work developed was based upon the work carried-out in WP1-2-4, and aimed to collect and derive the business model patterns for urban mobility and propose a business model portfolio that encourage cross-sector collaboration and create an integrated mobility system. This report is therefore addressed to cities and local authorities that have to meet mobility challenges (i.e. high costs and low margin, broad set of partners, competing with private car) by providing new services to activate and accelerate a sustainable modal shift. It also targets other stakeholders interested in business model concepts applied to cities

To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation

Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour. Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper. Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before. However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the sheer quantity and immediacy of such data. Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange, using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then, typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation, where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners. The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools, through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a variety of analytical engines and operational systems. Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data. Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration, using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques. CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers. Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a target market strategy and segmentation decisions. So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing; customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development; the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation. One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social marketing is the market segmentation process. The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources, intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours. This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper

Innovation in High-End Food Service During COVID-19 Lockdowns

COVID-19 lockdown measures have forced hospitality operators to re-configure their dynamic capabilities through innovating operational practices and pivoting traditional business models. The high-end food service sector has undergone a particularly drastic shift towards a new normal. This qualitative study explores factors facilitating innovation at 16 high-end food service organizations in Finland and the UK through semi-structured expert interviews. Three key themes facilitating innovation during COVID-19 lockdowns are identified: 1) Combining high-tech and high-touch through new ways of producing and providing technology-driven service offerings, 2) Prosocial engagement, i.e. working together with multiple stakeholders to bring added value to all parties, not just the business, and 3) Reactivity, i.e. pushing the traditional boundaries of the sector through quick decision-making and constant iteration and refining of processes and procedures. Drawing our empirical findings together, innovation during COVID-19 lockdowns in high-end food service is conceptualized into three phases: React, Refine, and Reflect

Security analysis and modelling framework for critical infrastructure systems

The provision and delivery of many of the services that modern society enjoys are the result of ubiquitous critical infrastructure systems that permeate across many sectors of the Australian community. Moreover, the integration of technological enhancements and networking interconnections between critical infrastructure systems has heightened system interdependence, availability and resilience, including the efficient delivery of services to consumers within Australia\u27s industrialised society. This research delivers a system security analysis and system modelling framework tool based on an associated conceptual methodology as the basis for assessing security and conceptually modelling a critical infrastructure system incident. The intent to identify potential system security issues and gain operational insights that will contribute to improving system resilience, contingency planning development applicable to disaster recovery and ameliorating incident management responses for Australian critical infrastructure system incidents.<br /

Rising to Ostrom’s challenge:An invitation to walk on the bright side of public governance and public service

In this programmatic essay, we argue that public governance scholarship would benefit from developing a self-conscious and cohesive strand of "positive" scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a program of research devoted to uncovering the factors and mechanisms that enable high performing public policies and public service delivery mechanisms; procedurally and distributively fair processes of tackling societal conflicts; and robust and resilient ways of coping with threats and risks. The core question driving positive public administration scholarship should be: Why is it that particular public policies, programs, organizations, networks, or partnerships manage do much better than others to produce widely valued societal outcomes, and how might knowledge of this be used to advance institutional learning from positives

‘If I get a job, I will just die here’ : An Ethnographic Public Service Study on Refugee Integration in Norway

In this study, I examine refugee integration efforts in four rural municipalities in Norway. The aim of the study was to understand how these municipalities work with refugee integration. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I followed public service employees and settled refugees in their everyday lives. Refugee integration has been a pressing topic in Norwegian public debate over the past 20 to 30 years, and the state, municipalities, voluntary organisations, and private individuals have persistently tried to solve the problem. Despite service innovation in the work of integrating immigrants and refugees and ongoing discussions regarding what integration should look like and how it should be achieved, no consensus has yet emerged. In other words, refugee integration is a complex social problem for which there does not appear to be a finite answer or solution. In this study, I use theoretical approaches from recent service research to examine the municipalities’ work in implementing the Introduction Act, which was enacted by Norway’s Storting in 2003–2004 and is a comprehensive service offering aimed at newly arrived refugees in need of basic qualifications. The act, operationalised through introductory programmes offered to settled refugees establishes a full-time, year-long programme that aims to help resident refugees in need of basic qualification. To study this work, I use public service logic (PSL) as a theoretical tool, framing the analytical approach with contributions from research on wicked problems and other social science concepts. Wicked problems are characterized by their insolvability, and the services offered with the aim of alleviating such problems are based on an articulation of a problem-solution complex. Such complexes reflect how all problems are defined around a possible solution: the problem and the solution are thus two sides of the same coin. This study examines refugee integration processes in Norwegian municipalities from the viewpoints of both settled refugees and public service employees. In doing so, it seeks to shed light on how refugee integration is conducted and perceived from these different perspectives. Through this study, I argue that municipal work with refugees requires constant adjustment. The nature of this work is captured through the concept of bricolage, where both employees and refugees associated with the services are exposed to persistent internally and externally driven changes that affect the service process – and refugees’ value creation

Toward a customer-centric perspective of customer experience

Customer experience has become a key priority in marketing research and practice. Researchers largely recognize that the customer experience emerges as responses to stimuli along a customer journey. Extant research often anchors the customer journey to an offering, losing sight of a customer’s goals. This firm-centric perspective hampers the understanding of customer experience, since in practice customers actively integrate resources from multiple firms, organizations, and social actors in pursuit of their goals. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a customer-centric perspective of customer experience. Such a perspective focuses on customers’ goals and seeks to understand customer experience as it emerges in a customer’s lifeworld. This dissertation comprises three articles. Article I examines the extant customer experience research to develop a theoretical foundation for the customer-centric perspective. Based on a systematic literature review of 136 articles, the study identifies eight literature fields in customer experience research: services marketing, consumer research, retailing, service-dominant logic, service design, online marketing, branding, and experiential marketing. Applying a metatheoretical analysis, the study divides extant literature into two research traditions that see customer experience as either responses to (1) managerial stimuli or (2) consumption processes. Through integrating compatible elements between these two research traditions, the paper develops four fundamental premises that define what customer experience is, the stimuli that affect it, its key contingencies, and the role of firms and organizations in its management. Article II offers suggestions on how customer experience can be empirically studied through a customer-centric perspective. Using selected literature, the study identifies the methodological requirements for the study of customer experience, namely: first-hand description of experience, description of relevant actors and institutions in a customer’s ecosystem, and capturing the processual nature of the journey. The article also offers specific guidelines for three data collection methods that fulfill those methodological requirements: phenomenological interviews, eventbased approaches, and diary method. Article III conceptualizes the customer journey through a goal-oriented view to generate a customer-centric perspective of customer experience. A hermeneutic phenomenological field study is conducted to examine recovering alcoholics’ journey toward a sober life. The findings reveal three essential journey processes: recognizing the problem and setting the goals, changing habits and behaviors, and overcoming obstacles and temptations. Interpreting the findings with the selfregulation model of behavior, the study develops a goal-oriented view of customer journey, depicted as a hierarchical structure with three levels: consumer journey, customer journey, and touchpoints. The findings show the role of customer experience as a driver of behavior along this journey. This dissertation creates new knowledge of the concept of customer experience in marketing. It integrates extant literature, thus solving theoretical conflicts in this fragmented research area; it provides methodological insights on the empirical inquiry of customer experience, specifying its requirements; and it puts forward a goal-oriented conceptualization of the customer journey that supports the development of a customer-centric perspective of customer experience. The study also produces important implications for marketing practitioners and public actors who wish to benefit from the customer-centric perspective of customer experience.Asiakaskokemuksesta on tullut keskeinen prioriteetti niin markkinoinnin tutkimuksessa kuin käytännöissä. Nykytutkimuksen näkemys on, että asiakaskokemus syntyy vasteena erilaisille asiakaspolun ärsykkeille. Asiakaskokemustutkimuksessa asiakaspolku kiinnitetään tyypillisesti tuotteisiin, jolloin käsitys asiakkaan varsinaisista tavoitteista hämärtyy. Tämä yrityskeskeinen näkökulma rajoittaa ymmärrystä asiakaskokemuksen muodostumisesta, sillä käytännössä asiakkaat ovat tekemisissä erilaisten yritysten, organisaatioiden ja sosiaalisten toimijoiden kanssa pyrkiessään kohti tavoitteitansa. Tämän väitöstutkimuksen tarkoituksena onkin kehittää asiakaskeskeinen näkökulma asiakaskokemukseen. Tutkimuksessa tavoitellaan asiakaskokemuksen ymmärtämistä asiakkaiden maailmasta käsin asettamalla keskiöön ne prosessit, joiden kautta asiakkaat pyrkivät saavuttamaan omat tavoitteensa. Tutkimus koostuu kolmesta artikkelista. Artikkeli I integroi asiakaskokemusta käsittelevän kirjallisuuden antia asiakaskeskeisen näkökulman muodostamiseksi. Systemaattisen, 136 artikkelia kattavan kirjallisuuskatsauksen pohjalta tunnistettiin kahdeksan tutkimuskenttää: palvelujen markkinointi, kuluttajatutkimus, vähittäiskauppa, palvelukeskeinen logiikka, palvelumuotoilu, online-markkinointi, brändäys ja kokemusperäinen markkinointi. Metateoreettisen analyysin avulla hajanainen kirjallisuus jaettiin kahteen tutkimustraditioon, joista toinen tarkastelee asiakaskokemusta vasteena yrityksen tuottamiin ärsykkeisiin ja toinen vasteena kulutuskokemukseen. Artikkelissa kehitettiin neljä premissiä, jotka luovat yhteisen pohjan asiakaskokemuksen tutkimukselle. Premissit määrittelevät asiakaskokemuksen käsitteen, kokemukseen vaikuttavat ärsykkeet, kokemuksen kontingenssitekijät sekä yritysten ja organisaatioiden roolin kokemusten johtamisessa. Artikkeli II tuottaa suosituksia asiakaskokemuksen empiiriseen tutkimiseen asiakaskeskeisen näkökulman kautta. Valikoivaa kirjallisuuskatsausta käyttäen tutkimus tunnistaa metodologisia vaatimuksia asiakaskokemuksen tutkimiselle. Metodien tulee taltioida asiakkaan ensikäden kokemukset, asiakkaan ekosysteemissä olevat keskeiset toimijat ja instituutiot sekä asiakaspolun prosessimainen luonne. Artikkeli tarjoaa lisäksi ohjeita kolmen alihyödynnetyn tiedonkeruumenetelmän – fenomenologisen haastattelun, tapahtuma-pohjaisten metodien ja päiväkirjamenetelmän – asianmukaiseen soveltamiseen. Artikkeli III kuvaa asiakaspolun käsitteen tavoitelähtöisen näkökulman kautta tuottaakseen aidosti asiakaskeskeisen jäsennyksen asiakaskokemuksesta. Tutkimus toteutettiin fenomenologis-hermeneuttisena kenttätutkimuksena, jossa tarkasteltiin toipuvien alkoholistien polkua kohti päihteetöntä elämää. Empiirisen aineiston pohjalta voitiin identifioida kolme keskeistä prosessia tällä matkalla: ongelman tunnistaminen ja tavoitteiden asettaminen, tapojen ja käyttäytymisen muuttaminen sekä esteiden ja houkutusten voittaminen. Empiirisiä havaintoja tulkittiin käyttäytymisen itsesäätelymallin kautta. Tuloksena syntyi tavoitelähtöinen jäsennys asiakaspolun käsitteestä, jossa polku kuvataan kolmesta tasosta – kuluttajapolusta, asiakaspolusta ja kosketuspisteistä – muodostuvana rakenteena. Tulokset tuovat esille asiakaskokemuksen tärkeän roolin käyttäytymisen ajurina. Väitöstutkimus luo uutta tietoa asiakaskokemuksen käsitteestä markkinoinnin tieteenalalla. Tutkimus integroi olemassa olevaa hajanaista kirjallisuutta ratkoen tutkimuskenttien välisiä ristiriitaisia näkemyksiä, tarjoaa uutta metodologista näkemystä tunnistamalla asiakaskokemuksen käsitteen empiiriselle tutkimukselle asettamia vaatimuksia ja esittää tavoitelähtöisen käsitteellistyksen asiakaspolusta, joka tukee asiakaskokemuksen asiakaskeskeistä tarkastelua. Tutkimus tuottaa tärkeitä, asiakaskeskeisen lähestymistavan toimeenpanoon liittyviä johtopäätöksiä markkinoinnin ammattilaisille ja julkissektorin toimijoille

How does servitization impact inter-organisational structure and relationships of a truck manufacturer's network?

© Cranfield University 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner.Network relationships play a significant role in the provision of servitized offerings. To date, little empirical research has been conducted to investigate the link between servitization and inter-organisational relationships. The objective of this doctoral thesis is to explore the implications of servitization on a manufacturer’s network. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact on the network structure and relationship attributes. An exploratory in-depth case study was conducted within the truck manufacturing industry using a multi-organisational perspective. An abductive research approach was adopted which was underlined by pragmatism. As part of this approach, 43 interviews were conducted in a total of 11 companies. The findings of the study suggest that managers need to be aware of the different customer needs, related offerings and resultant implications on the network structure and relationships. To this end, the findings show that as the offerings move towards advanced servitized offerings the network becomes more complex in terms of its structure and relationships. The research contributes to the literature by providing a more nuanced description of what actually occurs in a network when a manufacturer provides servitized offerings in conjunction with other product-based offerings. In particular, it identifies the relationship attributes that need to be managed in order to drive the right behaviour for the provision of each of these offerings. Moreover, it is the first known study to uncover triadic as well as tetradic network structures in a servitization context. Equally important, it provides a framework that captures the interplay between the different offerings and the resultant network structure and relationship attributes. In all of these capacities, this research is one of the first known studies to uncover some of the complexities surrounding the way in which inter-organisational relationships are enacted in a servitization context