Profiting from services and solutions: what product-centric firms need to know

Abstract

Manufacturers and other goods-dominant companies are eager, yet struggling, to broaden their offerings by growing monetized services supporting customers. The literature and managerial best practices currently provide limited direction in this burgeoning and challenging area for growth. The overall goal of this book is to delineate the meaning and subsequent execution of 'service infusion,' which we define as the development and offering of services in goods-dominant firms as a growth or profit strategy. We develop a framework called The Service Infusion Continuum that identifies and explains what this growth entails, looks at the key factors that must be transformed and discusses their relationships. The research that underpins the book addresses the overall question: How does The Service Infusion Continuum provide a framework that can guide management, marketing, sales and other related organizational changes needed for goods-dominant companies to successfully grow services and solutions? We focus on busness-to-business services that primarily support customers rather than entitlement and other relatively less complex services that support products. We review relevant literature, then share results from depth interviews in five Fortune 100 companies, and finally point to new directions and insights for managers.