Servitization in the digital age: A systematic review

Abstract

With the growth of digitalisation, more forms of innovative activity of companies emerge; it increases the interest of researchers to the relevance of introducing the concept of servitization in business functioning in an online environment. The problem is in a fragmentary nature of the existing studies since no general definition of the phenomenon of “servitization” has been formed yet. The purpose of this study is to perform a systematic review of articles from various databases, to overview the existing approaches to determining the role of servitization in the PSS model and to formulate the authors’ definition of this concept. In this study, we identified a common array of existing articles on servitization (1 659 conceptual, meta-analytical and empirical) from the databases of Scopus, Web of Science and Emerald Insight, which were analysed according to different criteria for inclusion or exclusion from the final pool of articles resulting in 24 papers selected for the detailed analysis. The results include the developed own definition of servitization, as well as the identification of four basic approaches to this concept. The author’s’ contribution to the development of the theory of servitization is strengthening of the focus on the role of servitization in the Production — Service — Solution model. The introduction of the concept of servitization improves the innovative activity of companies presenting their product in the digital environment. Thus, based on further studies of the properties and characteristics of servitization, effective decision-making models for doing business in the digital economy can be formed.