Two strands of servitization: A thematic analysis of traditional and customer co-created servitization and future research directions

The servitization literature has diverged, some adopting a goods-dominant logic and some a service-dominant logic. While both literature streams deal with servitization, their conceptual underpinnings and use of key terms are fundamentally different and have become confused within literature. This lack of clarity and understanding presents a challenge to both research and practice. The paper asks what the points of convergence and divergence are between the two streams of literature. The extant literature is reviewed to identify and understand where and how the streams converge and diverge. A two-tiered thematic analysis with both semantic and latent theme analysis is employed. Our findings highlight five points of departure, as well as highlighting examples where both logics have been applied. The five points of departure are the differing conceptualisations of: Value-in-Use, Design of the Servitized Offering, Value Co-production and Value Co-creation, Contextual Variety and Complexity, and Business Model of Solutions and Outcomes. We also propose conditions under which one logic may be more appropriate, in particular we find that adoption of a goods-dominant logic and service-dominant logic are better suited to the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness, respectively. Finally, we identify future research directions, particularly within the domain of the Internet-of-Things.