Using data to advance service: managerial issues and theoretical implications from action research

Abstract

Purpose-The proliferation of (big) data provides numerous opportunities for service advances in practice, yet research on using data to advance service is at a nascent stage in the literature. Many studies have discussed phenomenological benefits of data to service. However, limited research describes managerial issues behind such benefits, although a holistic understanding of the issues is essential in using data to advance service in practice and provides a basis for future research. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap. Design/methodology/approach-"Using data to advance service" is about change in organizations. Thus, this study uses action research methods of creating real change in organizations together with practitioners, thereby adding to scientific knowledge about practice. The authors participated in five service design projects with industry and government that used different data sets to design new services. Findings-Drawing on lessons learned from the five projects, this study empirically identifies 11 managerial issues that should be considered in data-use for advancing service. In addition, by integrating the issues and relevant literature, this study offers theoretical implications for future research. Originality/value-"Using data to advance service" is a research topic that emerged originally from practice. Action research or case studies on this topic are valuable in understanding practice and in identifying research priorities by discovering the gap between theory and practice. This study used action research over many years to observe real-world challenges and to make academic research relevant to the challenges. The authors believe that the empirical findings will help improve service practices of data-use and stimulate future research.

Multi-factor service design: identification and consideration of multiple factors of the service in its design process

“…Our work demonstrates the utility of the proposed method through several case studies. Our work could complement the existing body of service design literature (e.g., Kim and Meiren 2010;Patrício et al 2011;Cavalieri and Pezzotta 2012;Papastathopoulou and Hultink 2012;Lim et al 2018a) by showing the value of considering the multiple factors of the service in question in its design process. This paper is organized as follows: Sect.…”

“…Service design is a multidisciplinary area that contributes to innovations in the services by bringing new ideas to customers through design thinking (Ostrom et al 2010;Lim et al 2018a). Service design has received research priority as an actual means to create customer value (Ostrom et al 2015;Lüftenegger et al 2017).…”

“…Service design has received research priority as an actual means to create customer value (Ostrom et al 2015;Lüftenegger et al 2017). Developing knowledge or specific methods for service design is a research area that aims to facilitate customer value creation and service innovation (Patrício et al 2011;Cavalieri and Pezzotta 2012;Lim et al 2018a). The multi-factor nature of service has been discussed in the service design literature frequently but implicitly, although the term ''multi-factor nature'' is not applied.…”

“…The MFSD method has been developed through and used in our action research (Avison et al 1999) of five studies with industry and government on the design of services in automobile, transportation, healthcare, and telecommunications industries. Designing a new service is fundamentally about change in organizations (Lim et al 2018a). Action research through intensive collaboration between researchers and practitioners is useful to scrutinize issues in the change in question and to make academic research relevant to practice (Avison et al 1999;Coughlan and Coghlan 2002).…”

“…Various service design methods exist, such as the service design method based on the theory of inventive problem solving (Russian acronym: TRIZ) (Chai et al 2005), multi-level service design method (Patrício et al 2011), casebook-based service design method , and sensor data-based service design method (Lim et al , 2018a. However, a service design method that helps consider the multiple factors affecting customer value creation is not well known, although such consideration is the key to designing services that aim to create customer value (Lim et al 2018b).…”