Servitization and construction industry: ideas and insights from the commercial building sector

Abstract

Servitization, which can be defined as the combination of products and services in a single integrated solution, has been a topic attracting attention from scholars and managers all around the globe. Despite this, very few studies have proposed to analyse this phenomenon on the construction industry. Thus, this research objective is to fill this gap by evaluating how the construction companies from the commercial building sector are applying servitization to their business offers and what are the impacts of this application on their immediate network of suppliers and clients. With this objective in sight, it was performed a case study of three cases where servitization was being applied. The study analysed three networks (two dyads and on triad) of suppliers and clients of servitization. From the findings, it can be said that servitization brought results similar than found in other industries, such as differentiation and new streams of revenue. It also changed the cost structure of the offer, allowing for transferring part of the CAPEX to OPEX, and reducing of total costs involved. This work helps to understand how servitization is impacting the commercial building sector and, consequently, part of the construction industry as a whole.