Servitization and networking: Large-scale survey findings on product-related services

This research paper aims at analyzing the impact of servitization on networking in manufacturing industries. Based on a cluster analysis, four types of manufacturers have been identified representing different stages of servitization. By multifactorial regressions, the impact of servitization on service networking has been investigated. Servitization is positively linked with increasing service networking activities of manufacturing companies. This finding implies that problems in realizing service networking do not prevent servitizing manufacturers from establishing inter-firm collaboration for service operations management issues. However, the results indicate that the mere existence of service networks can not guarantee success in servitizing.