Consumer perceptions of service constellations: implications for service innovation

Abstract

Purpose -Consumers increasingly experience and value services as elements of a larger constellation of mutually facilitating, complementary, and supporting services.A service constellation is a combination of multiple interdependent servicesoften produced by multiple specialized service providersthat offer consumers complementary value and synergetic benefits. The service innovation literature and service managers have been slow to acknowledge that the value created by a service should be viewed as being interdependent on other services. In this work, we investigate how the service constellation perspective affects innovation strategies and potentially contributes to the innovation literature, proposing a research agenda.Design/methodology -By analyzing the notion of a service constellation, we provide an overview of major implications for service innovation research and practice. Three illustrative examples serve as anecdotal evidence. By identifying institutional, epistemological, and managerial differences, we contrast the service constellation approach with a traditional approach and describe a paradigm shift in service management. We outline consequences for service innovation.Findings -Firms and service innovation researchers need to focus on the perceived consumer value of the constellation rather than on individual services. We illustrate how service innovation from the constellation perspective requires coordination and synchronization between projects and different approaches to portfolio management and screening. Research limitations/implications -Adoption of the service constellation perspective creates new opportunities. New ways of creating value are highlighted that would not surface when focusing on individual services in isolation: new value propositions may result not only from conceptualizing and developing individual new 3 services, but also from developing a new service constellation without altering individual services. Article type -Research paper

One Master and Many End Users: Coordination Practices in Managing a Portfolio of Public Service Innovation Projects

“…Previous project portfolio management research has considered projects in isolation (Chao & Kavadias, 2008, Cooper et al 2001). However, we suggest that project portfolio managers need to consider and coordinate among projects in the existing project portfolio as a 'whole' (Girotra et al, 2007), because the potential value to the user of services from a project portfolio is larger than the sum of (individual) services considered in isolation, as suggested by the service constellations approach (c.f., Van Riel et al, 2013).…”

“…Coordinating between projects while considering the project portfolio as a whole instead of considering them in isolation can facilitate the creation of integrated services, because coherence and interdependencies among projects are considered and taken as a starting point to develop new services for users (Girotra et al, 2007;Van Riel et al, 2013). Previous research considered project portfolio management a merely rational process (Kester et al, 2011).…”

“…Previous project portfolio management research has insufficiently taken into account the issue of interdependency between service innovation projects, and the need for harmonisation among them (Killen and Kjaer, 2012). We pay specific attention to the role of interdependencies between service innovation projects because we have analysed how coordination of project portfolio is actually accomplished and can be improved in the future by focusing on the alignment of project outcomes to create integrated services that create an optimum value for the user (Osborne et al, 2013;Van Riel et al, 2013).…”

“…Users of these services, on the other hand, often need to combine various complementary offerings to satisfy their increasingly complex needs (Gustafsson and Johnson, 2003;Haveri, 2006;Osborne et al, 2013;Van Riel et al, 2013). If the innovation projects used to develop such complementary or interdependent service offerings are not conducted in mutual coordination, their end products are unlikely to fully satisfy user needs.…”

Data‐driven services marketing in a connected world

“…It is through relationships that service providers are offered the opportunity to listen to, understand, and often times evolve with a customer's needs to better differentiate service offerings (Van Riel et al, 2013). In turn, differentiated or even customized service offerings help enhance customer-firm relationships (Coelho and Henseler, 2012).…”