| Abstract [eng] |
Manufacturing companies facing commoditization of their products and stagnating markets transform their offerings by adding services to differentiate themselves and create an additional, continuous revenue stream. Simultaneously, digitalization offers the possibility to enhance the business model or elements of it. Digital technologies allows to broaden a company’s ecosystem, automate processes to increase efficiency, and create new ways of delivering value. Both, servitization and digitalization of manufacturing companies have gained increasing attention in research and at the convergence, the field of digital servitization emerged. While both servitization and digitalization are seen as promising opportunities, companies engaging in servitization or digitalization frequently report lower than expected performance. These cases are described by the servitization or digitalization paradox, which are situations in which initial investments in either servitization or digitalization achieve good results, but subsequent larger investments do not achieve the desired financial performance. Simultaneously, adding services based on digital technologies is seen as a promising way to capture value from digitalization. This promising relationship between servitization and digitization and the simultaneous paradoxical relationship to company performance lead to the research aim of this thesis, which concerns the assessment of the interplay of servitization and digitalization as well as their effect on company financial performance. While previous quantitative research in the individual fields resulted in granular models that allow the identification of the servitization and digitalization paradox, quantitative studies on the interrelationship of servitization and digitalization remain on a high level. In order to assess the relationship between servitization and digitalization on a more granular level, typologies for both servitization and digitalization from existing literature are explored and the effects of different types of services or digitalization efforts on company performance are evaluated. The resulting structural model relates different levels of sophistication of services to the digitalization of different elements of the business model. The effect on company performance is measured by multiple indicators for company financial performance to also assess impacts on single indicators such as revenue growth or profitability. To evaluate the created model, secondary data from the European Manufacturing Survey from Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria is used and analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling. This study focuses on the industry groups of the NACE divisions 25 – 30. The results obtained show the servitization paradox in that services supporting the product have a negative impact on profitability, while services supporting customer processes have a positive impact on profitability. At the same time, services supporting the product lead to more services supporting customer processes, which can be explained by companies developing service capabilities through simpler services and subsequently using them in more complex service offerings. With regard to digitalization, it is found that although the digitalization of manufacturing processes has a positive effect on the efficiency of companies, an effect on profitability or growth is not visible. In addition, no relationship to servitization can be established. The digitalization of design and development processes, on the other hand, has a positive effect on both profitability and the provision of services to support customer processes. However, the effect mediated by services on financial performance is not significant. The use of digital technologies in products has a positive effect on services to support customer processes and, through this mediation, a positive indirect effect on profitability. In terms of direct effects, the digitalization of products has a negative effect on revenue growth. In summary, it can be stated that servitization plays an important role, in the effect of product digitalization on financial performance in particular. In order to be able to use services to create value from digital products, it is advisable for companies to build up service capabilities. Companies should be prepared for initial services not generating high profitability and for digitalized products not immediately contributing to revenue growth. |
