| 1. |
- Högström, Claes, 1979-
(författare)
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Fit in to stand out : An experience perspective on value creation
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In order to grow and survive, a firm must create value with consumers in ways that both fit in with consumer demands and stand out from competitors. Focusing on and understanding consumer and firm assessments of value and creation of value has become a central scope in the contemporary strategic management and marketing literature for understanding and explaining firm survival and success. Consequently, the overall aim of this thesis is to provide a conceptually and empirically grounded understanding of consumers’ and managers’ value assessments and behavior in value creation.This thesis draws on a consumer experience perspective and theories on social construction, organizational identity, self-congruence, and the theory of attractive quality, and combines multiple qualitative and quantitative studies. The findings in this thesis shed light on the interplay between consumers, firms, and contextual structures in value creation. Contextual structural, cultural, and political forces are shown to affect and be affected by the shared and individual cognitions of value creation that firms and consumers use in their assessment and creation value.The results of the study enhance the understanding of how firms can adopt various strategic schemas or organizing logics to optimize different types of use value creation when choosing between opposing and contradictive demands in their value creation. Furthermore, the thesis provides a deeper understanding of the hierarchical nature of consumer judgments of value that can be used to enhance the effectiveness of firm prioritizations and as a foundation for future value-creating strategies.
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| 2. |
- Koskela-Huotari, Kaisa, 1984-
(författare)
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The evolution of markets - A service ecosystems perspective
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This conceptual dissertation aims to build an integrative and transdisciplinary framework of market evolution by reconnecting the study of innovations and markets, with help from the service ecosystems perspective. The service ecosystems perspective offers a processual, systemic, and institutional view on value creation, which is grounded in the axiomatic assumptions of service-dominant (S-D) logic. Hence, the dissertation departs from the premise that value, when perceived, is always cocreated by multiple, institutionally guided actors in service ecosystems through service exchange and the integration of resources. The dissertation extends the conceptualizations of innovations and markets from a service ecosystems perspective, with the help of institutional theory. The resulting transcending conceptualizations are then used to reconcile the paradoxical tensions identified in the conceptualizations of innovations within service research and markets within marketing literature in order to synthesize their substantial contributions into a cohesive framework of market evolution. By connecting insights from five appended papers and the reconciled literatures, the dissertation develops a recursive four-phase process model of market evolution as institutional dynamics of multi-dimensional value cocreation structures. The model explains how innovations as proto-institutional value cocreation structures emerge and how markets as institutionalized value cocreation structures evolve through institutional work carried out by multiple actors aiming to either maintain or disrupt a prevailing market. By beginning to unravel the institutional processes and market shaping strategies contributing to market evolution, the dissertation provides guidance to actors who are interested in markets and their development.
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| 3. |
- Löfberg, Nina, 1979-
(författare)
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Service Orientation in Manufacturing Firms : Understanding Challenges with Service Business Logic
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Globalisation and competition from low-cost countries has pushed manufacturing firms towards offering services to remain competitive. However, increasing the service orientation of a manufacturing firm to find new ways of value (co-)creation has presented several challenges, such as the fact that services do not provide the expected revenues, and resistance from both the sales force and from customers towards services.The aim of this thesis is to understand challenges linked to increasing service orientation in manufacturing firms, by means of goods and service business logics. The thesis emphasises the three dimensions of business logics – value perspective, service business strategy, and service offering – and studies them empirically in service divisions in the pulp and paper industry and in the automotive industry.The findings show that firms with inconsistency between the three dimensions face certain challenges. Most often, the firms have a value perspective of goods business logic, but a service business strategy and a service offering of service business logic. Therefore, the most important and most difficult challenge to overcome in order to increase a manufacturing firm’s service orientation is the employees’ value perspective.Three service manoeuvres were key to overcoming this challenge: changing employees’ mind-sets, starting to value services, and separating products and services. Although separating products and services could be assessed as a service manoeuvre consistent with goods business logic, it facilitated an increased service orientation. The fact that goods business logic manoeuvres led to a higher degree of service orientation, whereas service business logic manoeuvres did not always do so, is discussed as a service orientation paradox.
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| 4. |
- Quist, Johan, 1971-
(författare)
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Att översätta TQM : - en longitudinell studie kring reflekterande aktörer
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis focuses on translating Total Quality Management (TQM). The reason for this focus is that ideas such as TQM rarely or never contain a complete description of how the idea is to be “installed” in an organisation if it is to achieve the intended result. This often has the consequence that the result the idea is expected to produce in the organisation is only achieved in part, if at all. In Sweden there has been a great interest in working with the SIQ Model for Performance Excellence. In the thesis the model is viewed as an operationalisation of the TQM concept.The theoretical perspective of sensemaking is applied to understand what happens when organisations begin to use the model. This work is in the thesis seen as a translation process and contrasts the rational view of implementation. The sensemaking perspective rests on a social constructionist viewpoint, which distinguishes it from the view that TQM has on organisations. The study is placed in the interpretative paradigm and two service organisations in public sector have been studied with a longitudinal design.The main contribution of the study is a new way of looking at the work with the model. Thus, the interpretations could be seen as aspects, which together present a detailed description of the translation process. These aspects are, in summary, a way of looking upon and understanding:• the translation process as a number of parallel and reciprocal processes• the role of the translators• the relationship between translators and top management• the contextual prerequisites of the translation process.In addition to this, the thesis can work as a driving force towards a more constructive and critical attitude among practitioner of TQM. The somewhat seductive rhetoric and the risk to work with the model without an apparent intention are highlighted in the study. It seems that the model in itself can lead to collective sensemaking that gets the work done without discussing the intention. In light of the interpretations it becomes clear that working with the model is a relatively complicated process. Many of the failed attempts to reach excellence could be explained by unrealistic expectations of the character and requirement of the work. In the thesis, the translator has been introduced as a counterbalance that possibly could help dealing with the complexity of TQM.
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| 5. |
- Sundling, Catherine, 1962-
(författare)
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Overall Accessibility of Public Transport for Older Adults
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is based on four studies that explore accessibility for older adults during whole trips by public transport. The overall goal was to gain knowledge of the interrelationships among key variables and to develop a conceptual model of the overall accessibility of public transport. More specifically, the research goals were: (a) to explore links among the key variables postulated to be involved in overall accessibility and to explore the links between these variables and railway accessibility; (b) to gain a deeper understanding of links between critical incidents in traveling and travel behavior decisions; and (c) to develop a conceptual model of overall accessibility. The key variables contributing to overall accessibility are functional ability (depending partly on the person’s functional limitation or disease), travel behavior, and barriers encountered during whole-trip traveling involving train. Respondents with more than one functional limitation or disease reported lower functional ability than did those with only one such limitation and respondents with low functional ability were less frequent travelers than were those with high functional ability. Frequent travelers reported railway accessibility to be better than did those who traveled less frequently. The main barriers were ticket cost and poor punctuality, but respondents with the lowest functional ability attributed the barriers encountered to their own health. The critical incidents most frequently reported were found in the categories “physical environment onboard vehicles” and “physical environment at stations or stops”, as well as in the “pricing and planning during ticketing” phase of the trip. Five themes of reactions to critical incidents were identified that had resulted in behavior change: firm restrictions, unpredictability, unfair treatment, complicated trips, and earlier adverse experiences. A conceptual model of overall accessibility was developed, grounded in the empirical research results. This model is summarized in the following propositions: Overall accessibility is a reciprocal relationship among the barriers/facilitators encountered, functional ability, and travel behavior. Accessibility emerges in the person–environment interaction. To understand accessibility, past experiences and future expectations should both be considered, because both will guide travel decisions.
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| 6. |
- Vink, Josina
(författare)
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In/visible - Conceptualizing Service Ecosystem Design
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores and advances the evolving understanding of service design in service research. The study problematizes the prevailing view of service design as the design of service offerings to improve customer experiences. My work shows that this popular narrative does not adequately account for the situated struggles of actors when doing service design. As such, a more processual, embedded, systemic, and embodied perspective of service design is needed. In response, this thesis draws from the service ecosystems perspective of service-dominant logic, integrating insights from institutional theory, systems theory and design theory, to examine service design from an alternative perspective. This inquiry is supported through empirical inputs from a para-ethnographic study of Experio Lab in Sweden, a qualitative analysis of service design methods, and ‘research through design’ experiments. Through systematically combining these empirical and theoretical inputs, this work challenges the underlying assumptions about service design. Based on the development of alternative assumptions, this thesis builds an extended understanding of service design that unabashedly situates actors and their bodies within the dynamic service ecosystems they seek to design. Through this study, I formulate an extended understanding of service design that is referred to as service ecosystem design. Service ecosystem design is defined as the intentional and collective shaping of social structures, and their physical enactments, in order to facilitate the emergence of cocreated value-in-context. This thesis presents a process model for service ecosystem design that reframes service design from an iterative, linear, and phased process, to an embedded and ongoing feedback loop. This feedback loop involves the processes of reflexivity, through which actors build awareness of existing social structures, and reformation, through which actors’ intentionally reshape social structures toward preferred value cocreation configurations. Based on this alternative view of service design, this research offers a set of design principles and experimental approaches to help practitioners acknowledge and leverage the situated nature of their practice. By extending the understanding of service design, this thesis has implications for broader conversations about design, service, and systems change, and provides a foundation for future research at this intersection.
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| 7. |
- Lundberg, Christine, 1972-
(författare)
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Challenges in Delivering Services: The Front-Line Hospitality and Tourism Employee Perspective
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Significant challenges are faced by front-line hospitality and tourism employees interacting with customers on a daily basis. These challenges and the ways they are dealt with form the focus of this thesis. As they interact, a range of incidents may arise from highly satisfactory encounters to service failures. It has been argued that in order to achieve satisfactory service encounters, employees need to feel in control, satisfied and motivated as well as being given appropriate assistance, information and training. Front-line employees in hospitality and tourism are focused on here due to the complex nature of the industry. It is commonly agreed that it is characterised by poor working conditions such as anti-social working hours, part-time and/or seasonal work, minimal on-the-job training and low levels of pay. These are all factors which may affect employee work satisfaction and motivation as well as recruitment and retention. The thesis is comprised of four studies. In Study I, hospitality and tourism employee work motivation is analysed. Study II examines front-line hotel restaurant employees’ experiences of service encounters. How the skills utilised by employees during these service encounters are acquired and developed is then explored in Study III. Study IV concludes by examining employee informal information sharing activities, which offer one way of developing these skills. The thesis’ findings paint a more positive picture of work and workers in hospitality and tourism than suggested in some of the earlier published research. This could be explained by the fact that the thesis utilises an employee perspective in its truest sense. The findings of the thesis show that employees are motivated (to large extent by factors that have been pointed out in earlier published work motivation research) and that they are active in the pursuit of developing skills necessary to create satisfactory service encounters. Another conclusion of the thesis’ findings is that the interaction between workers and guests in the service encounter provides an important opportunity for workers to feel satisfied at work.
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| 8. |
- Camén, Carolina, 1975-
(författare)
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Using contracts to manage services : A study of contracts in public transport
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Contracts play a key role in many business to business relationships. Service organisations are no exception. Despite a growing interest of services and how services are managed, research on how to use contracts to manage services has been surprisingly sparse in service research. The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to a deeper understanding of using contracts to manage services in business-to-business relationships. Contract theories together with concepts from service research are used to enrich and understand how contracts are used to manage services and thus make contributions to service research. The thesis will give an empirically grounded understanding of managing services through contracts. The thesis consists of six separate papers, all based on data gathered from contractual relationships between contractors and service providers. The results are based on studies of authentic contracts which are not the case in most previous studies. The methods used for gathering and analysing data involve case studies, content analysis of authentic contracts, interviews and document studies of the public transport sector in Sweden which is an empirically rich area for studying contracts. The three main contributions of this dissertation are; firstly, an extended understanding of how contracts are used to manage the prerequisites for service quality for the parties involved. It was found that the concept service quality is brought forward on three interdependent managerial levels; from a detailed operational level, to a systemic oriented strategic level, and also a visionary rhetorical level each specifying the prerequisite for the services. To manage the prerequisites, the contracts rely on three identified means; laws and regulations, standards and measurements and economical incentives. Secondly, the detailed contents and rigidity of the contracts bring forward an inflexible and asymmetric relationship, where the parties are restricted in their activities. Here the contracts become a substitute for trust and commitment instead of supporting the development of trust and commitment. Finally, the thesis deepen the understanding of the role of contracts in governing services, from being a static abbreviator to a dyadic market based relationship, to becoming a dynamic tool for developing and sustaining a value creating and value driven collaborative network.
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| 9. |
- Löfgren, Martin, 1975-
(författare)
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The Leader of the Pack : A Service Perspective on Packaging and Customer Satisfaction
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Almost everything we as consumers buy in a store has a package. Packages have many functions – some, if not all, present marketers with the opportunity to gain competitive advantages. The packaging influences the usage behavior long after it has influenced the purchase, therefore it is an interesting empirical context to study within the field of marketing. Nevertheless, academic attention to packaging has been sparse over the last two decades even though the industry focus on packaging as a strategic tool has grown over that same period. Exceptions in the marketing literature are investigations of packaging and brand communication, advertisement-package coordination, and packaging size and shape. In contrast to the traditional approach that views packaging as a complimenting non-product-related attribute, it is suggested in this thesis that packaging is a product-related attribute that does affect the customers’ experiences of products.The overall aim of this thesis is to develop and test theoretical models and provide empirical evidence of customer experiences in the context of packaging from a service perspective. To study packaging from a service perspective is relevant for several reasons. One reason is that packaging can have several functions, which include more than the physical package. Another reason is that packages are carriers of information that is interpreted by customers. The combination of function, information, the physical package, and its content creates the total customer experience.The results of this thesis provide increased knowledge about packaging and customer experiences from a service perspective. On an attribute level, quality attributes such as protection and usability are categorized according to Kano’s theory of attractive quality. The results show that customers’ evaluations of packages are multi-dimensional. On a comprehensive or an overall level, structural equation modeling is used to investigate the consumption process. We conclude that the quality attributes of packages need to be designed to display quality both on the shelf in a store and during usage and consumption at both the attribute and comprehensive level.
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| 10. |
- Pareigis, Jörg, 1977-
(författare)
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Customer experiences of resource integration : Reframing servicescapes using scripts and practices
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is widely acknowledged that value can be regarded as interactively formed by customers through the integration of a variety of resources. However, it is difficult to find service research that takes these concepts seriously in empirical studies. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to present an empirically grounded understanding of how customer resource integration takes place in practice and how customers experience their resource integration. By collecting data of public transport customers through qualitative diaries, interviews, and video recordings of situated action in addition to a survey, the thesis draws on script and practice theory.The main contribution of the thesis is an empirically grounded model of customer experience of resource integration, which can be summarized in six propositions: (a) customers can acquire four different types of scripts: generic, incongruent, rigid, or transformative; (b) the script types are implicit parts of interactive value practices, which emerge as navigating and ticketing in the empirical context of public transport; (c) the interactive value practices are constellations of the resource integration activities of identifying, sense-making, and using, which customers focus on to varying extents, depending on their acquired script; (d) during or after interactive value formation customers potentially update their scripts; (e) customer processes, other customers, the physical environment, contact personnel, provider processes, and the wider environment all form the context of the service, but can also be resources that the customer integrates; and (f) the customer experience is a holistic evaluation of the interactive value formation and can be understood as consisting of three dimensions: a cognitive evaluation and two affective evaluations, positive activation and positive deactivation. As such, I reframe the notion of the servicescape in order for it to be more attuned to the perspective of interactive value formation and resource integration.
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