Product Service Systems Research Research Articles

Product-Services for a Resource-Efficient and Circular Economy: An Updated Review

The development of product-service systems (PSSs) has become one of the most prominent ways in which to promote a circular and resource-efficient economy. These systems shift the focus from selling products as commodities to offering solutions that fulfil customers’ needs and provide added value. PSSs have gained attention due to their potential to foster sustainability, particularly in the context of the circular economy and resource efficiency. This review article analyzes the literature on PSSs for the period of 2016–2022, aiming to explore the links between PSSs, sustainability, circular economy, and resource efficiency. Close to 160 relevant articles were identified and examined. The overall findings reinforce contributions from previous studies, which denote a tendency towards sector-specific studies, barriers, and stimuli to implementation and adoption, and PSS design methodologies in specific industries and sectors. The overall results show a steady growth of PSS literature, as well as consistency in its definition, despite variations according to the perspective from which the topic is analyzed. This study focuses on eight main trends in PSS research, along with eight challenges that arise in its design, implementation, and adoption, identifying avenues for future research.

A Longitudinal History-Based Review of the Product-Service System: Past, Present, and Future

The research field of product-service systems (PSS) has experienced rapid growth since it emerged at the end of the 80s. Consequently, the conceptual structure of the PSS research field has expanded, and this phenomenon has driven novel research topics and future trends. This study analyzes the evolution and conceptual structure of the PSS research field since its emergence. A systematic literature review based on a bibliometric analysis was conducted, followed by a co-keyword analysis and content analysis, aiming to develop a historical overview of the nature of the research. The dataset involved 868 studies published between 1988 and 2022. The results present an analysis of the evolution of the literature in the following periods: (i) from 1988 to 2015, referred to in this study as the ‘past’, and (ii) from 2016 to 2022 (the ‘present’). A comparative analysis of the two periods is carried out, and the main topics and research trends and perspectives for future studies are identified (the ‘future’). Some of the main research topics include digitalization and sustainability, for which discussions on smart PSS, life-cycle management, ecodesign, knowledge management, development of assessment tools, simulation, and modeling technologies, have appeared. Research opportunities for future studies aligned with those topics are also identified, e.g., map key success factors to positive implementation of proposals that reconcile PSS with digitalization.

Developing PSS business ecosystems in the digital era

This paper presents two approaches to developing PSS (product-service systems) business ecosystems for manufacturing and service organisations by leveraging digital development. Our research is based on two in-depth, comparative case studies of large multinational corporations: one manufacturing company that takes the servitisation approach and the other a logistics services company taking a productisation approach. The research addresses two principal gaps in extant PSS research. First, most extant PSS research focuses predominantly on servitisation development and overlooks the productisation perspective. We address this gap by considering PSS from both a productisation and servitisation perspective. Second, extant research investigates PSS integration mainly from the ‘technical’ and ‘commercial’ perspectives. In contrast, this research adds a ‘social’ perspective by considering the business-to-authority (B2A) and business-to-public (B2P) relations. The findings also provide business practitioners with preliminary yet meaningful insights into holistic consideration of PSS ecosystem integration from ‘technical’, ‘commercial’ and ‘social’ perspectives. Moreover, we seek to push the boundaries of PSS ecosystem research and promote interdisciplinary research across fields, including business strategy, industrial marketing, social marketing, public policy and supply chain management.

Asset Management Framework and Tools for Facing Challenges in the Adoption of Product-Service Systems

Servitization is recognized as a key business strategy for original equipment manufacturers willing to move up the value chain. However, several barriers have to be overcome in order to successfully integrate products and services. Many of these barriers are caused by the technical challenges associated with the design and management of the product-service systems (PSSs), such as life cycle service level and cost estimation, risk management, or the system design and pricing. Asset management (AM) presents itself as a key research area in order to overcome these barriers as well as to integrate PSSs within the manufacturers’ operations management. It is the scope of this article to provide theoretical and practical insights with regards to the alignment of AM and PSS research areas. To support the alignment between both areas, a management framework which gathers specific technologies, including reliability analysis, simulation modeling, and multiobjective optimization algorithms, is presented. The purpose of the framework is to provide manufacturers with a decision-support tool that facilitates the main managerial challenges faced when implementing a servitization strategy. The article contributions are successfully applied to case studies in the railway and wind energy sectors based on real field data, thereby demonstrating their suitability for both facilitating manufacturer’s decision-making process and better satisfying stakeholders’ interests.

THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEM CONCEPT: A CITATION / CO-CITATION ANALYSIS

The concept of product-service system (PSS) can be described as a market proposition that increases the value of a product by adding additional services. The present paper aims to contribute to the current understanding of PSS research field by identifying and visualizing its theoretical evolution. A citation and co-citation bibliometric analysis was conducted and it was possible to identify that PSS theory was supported by an integrated approach of the servitization (VANDERMERWE; RADA, 1988)and the service-dominant logic concepts. A co-citation map enables the visual representation of the intellectual structure of PSS research field contributing to better identify gaps and opportunities for future research

Research on product-service systems: topic landscape and future trends

PurposeThe paper attempts to address the following research questions (RQs): RQ1: What are the main research topics within PSS research? RQ2: What are future trends for PSS research?Design/methodology/approachTwenty years of research (1999–2018) on product-service systems (PSS) produced a significant amount of scientific literature on the topic. As the PSS field is relatively new and fragmented across different disciplines, a review of the prior and relevant literature is important in order to provide the necessary framework for understanding current developments and future perspectives. This paper aims to review and organize research contributions regarding PSS. A machine-learning algorithm, namely Latent Dirichlet Allocation, has been applied to the whole literature corpus on PSS in order to understand its structure.FindingsThe adopted approach resulted in the definition of eight distinct and representative topics able to deal adequately with the multidisciplinarity of the PSS. Furthermore, a systematic review of the literature is proposed to summarize the state-of-the-art and limitations in the identified PSS research topics. Based on this critical analysis, major gaps and future research challenges are presented and discussed.Originality/valueOn the basis of the results of the topic landscape, the paper presents some potential research opportunities on PSSs. In particular, challenges, transversal to the eight research topics and related to recent technology trends and digital transformation, have been discussed.

Reconciling and reconceptualising servitization research: drawing on modularity, platforms, ecosystems, risk and governance to develop mid-range theory

PurposeThis research bridges disparate research on servitization, namely product–service systems (PSS) and integrated solutions (IS), to provide valuable insights for the progression of the field. It acts as a reconciliation of these research streams and offers a reconceptualised agenda incorporating recent research on platforms, ecosystems, modularity, risk and governance as key conceptual themes to synthesise and build theory.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual, theory development article focused on advancing thinking on servitization by identifying systematic and theoretically informed research themes. It also proposes future research opportunities to advance theoretical contributions and practical implications for servitization research.FindingsBy reviewing and synthesising extant PSS and IS research, this article identified five core themes – namely modularity, platforms, ecosystems, risks and governance. The importance of these five themes and their linkages to PSS and IS are examined and a theoretical framework with a future research agenda to advance servitization is proposed.Originality/valueThis paper considers the similarities and differences between PSS and IS in order to develop a theory and to reconcile formerly disparate research efforts by establishing linkages between core themes and identifying valuable synergies for scholars. The importance of the core themes and current gaps within and across these themes are shown, and a mid-range theory for servitization is positioned to bridge the servitization-related PSS and IS communities.

Information Asymmetry in Product-Service System Design - Example of the Pharmaceutical Industry

Product-Service System (PSS) is a combination of products and services aimed at meeting the requirements of customers. This concept enables the generation of new values in Business-2-Business while supporting environmental protection. Design is an important area of PSS research and development. An important limitation that has not been well analyzed so far is the presence of information asymmetry during the design of the PSS. PSS design methods available in the literature do not provide guidelines and tools to combat information asymmetry. The aim of the article is to analyze the causes of information asymmetry in the design of PSS for the pharmaceutical sector and to develop a model preventing information asymmetry. The example presented in the article was developed during a industrial workshop conducted in a company operating in the pharmaceutical industry. When creating the models of information asymmetry and elimination of information asymmetry, the authors relied on experiences and misunderstandings in corporate communication. The conducted research provides guidelines for enterprises that will eliminate information asymmetry and improve relations between stakeholders.

Is it who you are or what you do? Insights for Mobility as a Service from research on a car club

The concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is for a personalised, one-stop travel management platform digitally unifying trip purchase and delivery across all transport modes. MaaS has potential to reduce the environmental impact of personal mobility, yet its implementation has been hindered by challenges including consumer acceptance. There is little research on the issue, particularly in the context of existing MaaS exemplars. This paper draws on insights from research into a related concept, the Product Service System (PSS), which is a resource efficient system of products and services supported by networks and infrastructure. The application of findings from PSS research to MaaS may avoid duplicated efforts and offer a template for further research. The paper draws on two complementary views of PSS consumption, one shaped by consumers' choice and the other by socio-material structures. The findings suggest that whilst consumers may choose to use PSS for mobility because it defines their identities, their consumption through PSS is constrained because they are locked in the geographical configuration of social life. These insights have implications for policies to support MaaS and suggest that whilst a view of consumer choice encourages interventions such as educational communications, socio-material structures inform interventions based on structural investment.

Concept for Introducing Sustainable Product Service Systems through aBusiness Game

A fundamental change in how businesses are conducted and operated is an essential factor to reach more sustainable solutions on the industry level. However, the education of graduate students in Product Service Systems (PSS) or specifically in sustainable PSS is still very limited. Despite the fact that there has been significant work on how PSS performs as a business concept and how it may contribute to competitiveness, the sustainability-orientated PSS research has paid limited attention to the education sector. Therefore, this paper presents a concept on how sustainable PSS can be taught to production management students using a business game. The presented concept is based on a business game currently used in production technology education at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer.

Under which circumstances do consumers choose a product service system (PSS)? Consumer benefits and costs of sharing in PSS

Product sharing through product service systems (PSS) give consumers the opportunity to use products without owning them. The diffusion and adoption of PSSs can potentially reduce the consumption's negative external effects on the environment by moving society in the direction of a resource-efficient economy. However, PSS research has yet to provide a framework for understanding why consumers choose a PSS. The authors conceptualize the consumer's choice of a PSS sharing offer based on a cost-benefit analysis. A regression analytic approach confirms this model in the business-to-consumer-context (B2C), thereby demonstrating that the emotional costs related to a perceived stockout risk decrease the intention of consumers to choose a PSS. For the first time, it is shown that –especially consumers who have a strong environmental consciousness – are willing to bear the emotional costs and choose a PSS. Furthermore, it is shown that non-monetary intangible benefits drive consumers to choose a PSS sharing offer, including the socializing aspect of sharing and the convenience of non-ownership. The authors derive implications for practice and further research.

Uncovering the Topic Landscape of Product-Service System Research: from Sustainability to Value Creation

As the product-service system (PSS) is considered a promising business model that can create more value for customers, PSS research has enjoyed remarkable growth in its volume and coverage over the last decade. This study aims to delineate the thematic landscape of PSS research by identifying latent topics from a large amount of scholarly data. Ten topics of PSS research are identified by applying the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model to 1229 PSS publications published between 2000 and 2016. The ten PSS topics are briefly reviewed to provide an overview of what has previously been studied in PSS research. We also investigate which topics rise or fall in popularity by identifying hot and cold topics of PSS research. It is observed that the focus of discussions on the benefits of PSS has shifted from sustainability to value creation. Also, increasing attention has been paid to more practical topics such as PSS implementation. The areas of subspecialty of the top ten PSS journals are also examined to explore the interdisciplinary nature of PSS research and thematic differences across disciplines. The findings of this study can provide rich implications for both academia and practice in the field of PSS.

A customer-oriented model of product-service system lifecycle

A product-service system (PSS) is an integrated bundle of products and services, which aims at creating customer utility and enhancing manufacturers' competitiveness. Given that products and services are integrated over a specific cycle, PSS lifecycle has become a key notion in PSS research. However, most studies focus on PSS lifecycle from a provider perspective although the essence of PSS is to create customer utility. The current work proposes a customer-oriented model of PSS lifecycle as a solid basis for analysing PSS lifecycle from a customer perspective. The proposed model comprises one general and three specific types of PSS lifecycle (product-, use-, and result-oriented PSS). The proposed model is expected to be utilised to supplement the existing studies to consider the PSS mechanism from a customer perspective. A concrete notion of PSS lifecycle from a customer perspective may contribute to customer-oriented PSS innovations.

Digital competence of stakeholders in Product-Service Systems (PSS): Conceptualization and empirical exploration

Recent research argues that digitalization is a key enabler for servitization and a critical component in Product-Service Systems (PSS). However, digitalization capabilities in servitization research have so far only been specified at an organisational level. Specifications or empirical investigations that focus on specific stakeholders such as individual workers who are affected by digital transformation are still a gap in research. This research gap is addressed by exploring digital competence on a conceptual and empirical basis and separate it from other PSS-specific competences which have already been introduced. The article builds on recent research in the areas of digitalization, servitization and stakeholders competence in PSS. Two research questions are addressed: How can digital competence be understood and measured, and which implications can be drawn for PSS research and management? The results of the preliminary empirical investigation (n = 49) reveal that a scale of digital competence based on three subcategories: “technical handling”, “critical evaluation” and “problem-oriented usage” determine distinct facets of a new way of digitally enabled problem-solving that is related to the evaluation and exploitation of digital information in individual and group-oriented settings.

The Task to Design Highly Service-oriented Product-Service System

In recent years there has been much research on designing Product-Service systems (PSS), but difficulties still remain with regard to implementing them into industries. In order to break through this situation, this paper aims to clarify the problems regarding current research into PSS design. In particular, we investigate a literature review on PSS design and conduct interviews with experts in PSS research. Based on the results, we clarify and organize the tasks needed for effective PSS design, discussing the problems associated with it. Finally, we identify research issues concerning PSS design that require further work.

Product/Service-System Origins and Trajectories: A Systematic Literature Review of PSS Definitions and their Characteristics

Literature provides multiple definitions on Product/Service-Systems (PSS), and as the field develops, certain trajectories emerge. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the stabilization of PSS definitions within PSS research, by presenting the most prominent PSS definitions and their interrelationships. As the result of a strict protocol, the paper identifies 52 prominent definitions related to PSS, where the citation relations between the prominent definitions arestudied and graphically illustrated. The definitions are furthermore analyzed to identify common PSS definition characteristics and eleven different characteristics identified. Descriptive analysis is carried out on the identified PSS definition characteristics, to determine commonalties and differences in the field. Even though the literature provides many different variations of PSS definitions, there is certain convergence regarding key characteristics of PSS, including Product and Services as well as Customer Needs.

Innovation in Product-Service System Engineering Based on Early Customer Integration and Prototyping

Product-Service Systems (PSS) enhance product-centered offers with services and infrastructure in order to provide customer-oriented solutions. These new concepts enable companies to innovate their portfolio, thus supporting creative and adaptable solutions [1]. One of the major challenges is the integrated development of both tangible products and intangible services in respect to their interdependencies. For this reason researchers proposed a versatile set of methods and tools regarding the development of PSS. Nevertheless, two discrepancies can be stated: Firstly, prototyping has been studied inadequately in PSS research so far. For this reason Exner et al. proposed new approaches to fill this gap [2], including remarks to further proceed research with different degrees of technological utilization. Secondly, although customer-orientation and customer integration has been recognized as crucial for PSS, the involvement of clients or consumers in the design process is often disregarded. Consequently, this paper presents an extensive literature research regarding active customer integration and prototyping in PSS design processes. Based on these insights a concept for a new PSS prototyping approach is introduced. The method focuses on PSS concept development including the integration of the customer to evaluate and develop the concepts with intuitive touch technologies.

Alliance formation by intermediary ventures in the solar service industry: implications for product–service systems research

Product–Service System (PSS) business models let firms sell the functionality of a physical product rather than the product itself, typically while retaining ownership and control of the product. PSS business models can increase the sustainability of product industries as the life-cycle responsibility of PSS firms incentivize the creation of more durable products, facilitate effective repair and maintenance regimes, and make obsolescence plans for products important.Extant PSS research is predominantly concerned with how manufacturing firms add PSS offerings to their existing operation, a process that often is difficult. This article argues that a key source for PSS growth may be intermediary firms, purpose-built for the business model to constitute a link between manufacturers and customers. The topic has been touched upon indirectly by scholars but not dealt with by PSS literature as a phenomenon in its own right. Yet intermediary PSS actors are already reshaping technology sectors. The solar panel market in the US, today dominated by the business model, is a prominent example. Firms with intermediary PSS business models are also advancing in areas such as local heating solutions and electric vehicle sharing.So how do intermediary PSS firms emerge? Based on comprehensive case studies of intermediary firms in the solar industry and other sectors, this article presents central insights on how intermediary PSS ventures are built and what role they can play. The study focuses on the types of alliances and alliance formation processes needed by intermediary ventures while also suggesting hypotheses on the sustainability impact of the business model. In addition to theoretical contributions the article provides advice to manufacturers aiming to benefit from the growth of intermediary PSS business models.

Towards a Meta-model for the Description of the Sociotechnical Perspective on Product-service Systems

Due to the increased pressure from today's globalized economy, companies need to develop innovative systems in order to achieve greater market competitiveness. Product-Service Systems (PSS) are one possibility to realize this. In order to successfully realize PSS, their surrounding social subsystemscontaining vital stakeholders such as suppliers and service providers, legislative bodies and users, need to be designed and developed along with the technical components. In order to achieve this, the modelling of large and complex sociotechnical systems becomes necessary. These sociotechnical systems result from the existence of multiple social and technical subsystems within PSS that are highly interconnected. Various tools for the analysis of complex sociotechnical systems exist, however there are currently no systematic approaches available in PSS research to describe these sociotechnical systems in order to create comparable system models. This paper describes the development of a metamodel for modeling of such sociotechnical systems. The approach applied is a combination of a literature survey into existing approaches of PSS metamodeling and the abstraction of concrete models created based on a case study of a bike sharing system developed by students. In the future, the metamodel will be refined, formalized, and used as a basis to conduct e.g. complexity analyses of sociotechnical systems of PSS.

Bibliometric Analysis of the Product-Service System Research Field

The interest for the product-service system (PSS) approach has increased substantially in the last decade. New born research fields such as the PSS require the understanding of their knowledge structure as well as of their evolving structure of research collaborations. In this sense, the research field is better explained, supporting the alignment among new studies and an improved performance in the knowledge building. There are already papers in the literature that addressed the state-of-the-art in PSS, providing important guidance. However, they have not still focused on quantitative metrics, which are capable of providing a supplementary perspective. Therefore, this study aims at developing a bibliometric analysis of the PSS research field, looking for its current situation and possible evolution in terms of knowledge creation, collaboration networks and geographical distribution. A sample of 118 PSS papers published from 2002 to 2013 was collected in the Web of Science Database. Vantage Point, UCINET and NetDraw software was used to perform the bibliometric analysis. The results show a huge increase of the research field after 2011 and a balanced distribution of papers among authors. Europe and Asia are assigned to the majority of studies, showing strong collaboration networks among their institutions. Furthermore, journals with the highest number of PSS papers and the most cited papers are identified as well as the predominant knowledge topics addressed within the period. This study provides a holistic view of the PSS research field. It provides metrics regarding publications, which are useful for new entrants to identify the state-of-the-art and to understand their possible contributions to the research field. In addition, the investigation of collaboration networks shows the research groups in activity, highlighting opportunities for new collaborations and supporting the development of scientific policies. Finally, this study adopts quantitative metrics that can be reused for other studies in the future to update the status of the PSS research field or to perform similar analysis for other fields.