Multichannel digital service delivery and service ecosystems: The role of data integration within Smart Product-Service Systems

Abstract

Services for Smart Product-Service Systems (PSS) business models can be delivered through multiple digital channels like smart products, cloud systems, and workers enhanced by virtually augmented systems. Since these channels are data-intensive dependent, they usually require data sources from the company's service ecosystem. Prior studies have shown how to build network capabilities for Smart PSS, but little is known about the extensive integration of data in such service ecosystems. We aim to understand how multichannel digital services can be supported by the integration of real-time data from service ecosystems to provide Smart PSS business models. Using the organizational information-processing theory, we consider the integration of data from three ecosystem actors (other business units, suppliers, and customers) and analyze how such data sources can support the use of these digital technologies in three types of Smart PSS business models. We examine these relationships through regression analyses based on a survey of 92 manufacturers, providing a typology of different Smart PSS business models in the ecosystem. Our study enlightens how data flows through the ecosystem actors to support Smart PSS business models. Practitioners and scholars can learn how to treat Smart PSS according to the specific business models to be implemented and how to combine digital technologies with data integration channels in the service ecosystem. Moreover, we show how this combination of digital transformation and Smart PSS help expand the organizational information-processing theory in the innovation ecosystems' domain, also providing a new vein of research to the digital servitization literature.