Exploring servitization and digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises: evidence from an industrial internet platform in China

Abstract

Servitization is vital to manufacturing enterprises’ competitive advantages and financial performance in contemporary digitalisation environments. Enterprises are increasingly relying on industrial Internet platforms to satisfy potential customers’ needs as well as to create superior value, but the literature has neglected to explain how enterprises can leverage such digital platform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of servitization. This study aims at describing how the industrial Internet platform can enable servitization of manufacturers. Based upon the meta-theoretical foundations of service-dominant logic, we identify the ‘sense and respond’ servitization strategy enabled by the industrial Internet platform. By performing a questionnaire survey, we find that the industrial Internet platform approach based on the connectivity and compatibility architecture can enable manufacturers to improve the efficiency of resource integration and resource reconfiguration, which facilitates the implementation of servitization via market perception . We argue that the industrial Internet platform affects an organisation’s ability to sense the market and resource management actions; these operational resource actions are a significant antecedent of the servitization strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial internet platform
• digital servitization
• service-dominant logic
• platform characteristics
• web-based manufacturing

Acknowledgment

The work conducted in this paper was sponsored by Youth Project of Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (LQ22G020003).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement (DAS)

The data related to the paper can be freely available by the authors upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LQ22G020003), and the Research Startup Foundation of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (21092118-Y).

Notes on contributors

Yi Liu

Yi Liu received her Ph.D. degree in Business Administration from Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, in 2020. She is a lecturer at the School of Economics and Management at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China. Her research interests include digital transformation, manufacturing servitization, industrial big data, digital platforms, and sustainable competitive advantage.

Justin Zuopeng Zhang

Justin Zuopeng Zhang is a faculty member in the Coggin College of Business at University of North Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration on Management Science and Information Systems from Pennsylvania State University, University Park. His research interests include economics of information systems, knowledge management, electronic business, business process management, information security, and social networking. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Information Management, an ABET programme evaluator, and an IEEE senior member.

Sajjad Jasimuddin

Sajjad M. Jasimuddin is Senior Professor at KEDGE Business School. Previously, he was a member of the faculty at Aberystwyth University (UK), Southampton University (UK), King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia) and University of Dhaka (Bangladesh). He is a visiting Professor at Renmin University of China (IFC) and the University of Dubai (UAE). He received a BCom(Hons.) and a MCom from Dhaka University, an MPhil from Cambridge University (Trinity College), and a PhD from Southampton University. Sajjad has authored a text book, 15 chapters, and 109 articles in journals such as International Business Review, European Journal of Operational Research, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Production Planning & Control, Information Systems Management, Journal of Operational Research Society, Management Decision, British Journal of Healthcare Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Journal of Knowledge Management, and International Journal of Organisational Analysis. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Global Information Management and International Journal of Collaborative Engineering. Sajjad is an editorial member and reviewer of various journals including Information Resource Management Journal, Journal of Information and Knowledge Management, and Internataional Business Review.

M. Zied Babai

M. Zied BABAI is Senior Professor in Operations Management at Kedge Business School. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris (France) where he also worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant for four years. From October 2006 to September 2008, he joined the Centre for Operational Research and Applied Statistics at the University of Salford (UK), working on a project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, UK). His research interests relate primarily to operations and supply chain management including demand forecasting and inventory management with a special emphasis on the development of quantitative models. He is the Editor-In-Chief of Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Francis & Taylor), Area Editor of IMA Journal of Management Mathematics (Oxford Press) and Associate Editor of International Journal of Production Research (Francis & Taylor).