Abstract
Smart services serve customers and their individual, continuously changing needs; information and communications technology enables such services. The interactions between customers and service providers form the basis for co-created value. A growing interest in smart services has been reported in the literature in recent years. However, a categorization of the literature and relevant research fields is still missing. This article presents a structured literature search in which 109 relevant publications were identified. The publications are clustered in 13 topics and across five phases of the lifecycle of a smart service. The status quo is analyzed, and a heat map is created that graphically shows the research intensity in various dimensions. The results show that there is diverse knowledge related to the various topics associated with smart services. One finding suggests that economic aspects such as new business models or pricing strategies are rarely considered in the literature. Additionally, the customer plays a minor role in IS publications. Machine learning and knowledge management are identified as promising fields that should be the focus of further research and practical applications. Concrete ideas for future research are presented and discussed and will contribute to academic knowledge. Addressing the identified research gaps can help practitioners successfully provide smart services.
Highlights
Increasing digitalization and the emergence of the Internet of Things have fostered growing interest in smart services inThis article is part of the Topical Collection on Smart Services: The move to customer-orientation Responsible Editor: Rainer AltThe number of publications that have focused on smart services has greatly increased in recent years
Based on the aspects named in the literature, the following definition of smart services is derived, forming the basis for this article: Smart services are individual, highly dynamic and quality-based service solutions that are convenient for the customer, realized with field intelligence and analyses of technology, environment and social context data, resulting in co-creating value between the customer and the provider in all phases from the strategic development to the improvement of a smart service
The literature review presented in this study provides a broad, structured overview of research in the field of smart services
Summary
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Smart Services: The move to customer-orientation Responsible Editor: Rainer Alt. The presented literature review clusters existing publications related to smart services based on topics and lifecycle phases. The present article indicates that the customer and the environment are involved and form an important part in all phases from a strategic development to the improvement of operational smart services This interaction can be direct, e.g. in form of feedback, or indirect, e.g. by providing information. Based on the aspects named in the literature, the following definition of smart services is derived, forming the basis for this article: Smart services are individual, highly dynamic and quality-based service solutions that are convenient for the customer, realized with field intelligence and analyses of technology, environment and social context data (partially in real-time), resulting in co-creating value between the customer and the provider in all phases from the strategic development to the improvement of a smart service. Research gaps were identified that form promising areas for further research
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