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Abstract

During the last years, several frameworks for developing PSSs arose, which vary in focus. Examples of their focuses are engineering processes, technology, knowledge engineering, services or tangible products. However, just a few frameworks concentrate on the market or, specifically, the customer. As the customer is the key success factor of any product, we have developed a framework for designing PSSs by adapting an existing technology-centered framework. Our framework describes the perspective of increasing customer acceptance using PSS. Increasing customer acceptance means to reduce the effects and influences of customer barriers, e.g. unnecessary high costs of purchase or a lack of trust in the product's reliability. The model consists of three layers and the strategy space. The layers are the customer layer, the barriers layer and the solution layer. The customer layer describes the customers and the target groups of customers, who the PSS aims at. The barriers layer includes all customer barriers that are to be reduced by the PSS. The solution layer describes the PSS and its components; tangible elements, intangible elements and the infrastructure for connecting all elements. This layer shows how the PSS is realized to reduce the customer barriers of the focused target group. As other goals and influences affect the design of a PSS, the strategy includes external factors. Those external factors are generated by the company itself (e.g. other departments, product portfolio) or by external stakeholders or sources (e.g. suppliers, laws). Our model helps designers to understand the proceeding to design a PSS for increasing customer acceptance by reducing customer barriers.