Service infusion in manufacturing and corporate strategies in the service solutions market – driving forces and components

This chapter aims to examine and discuss the impact of ‘servitization’ and ‘service infusion’ in manufacturing companies by contextual analysis of previous studies in the development of different service logics and a case study of the wind turbine industry (use of service agreements). The aim is to answer the following questions: What is changed by the increased service infusion of a manufacturing company and in the relationship between providers and customers? Why are service offerings and service components increasingly becoming an essential part of the business model and innovation process of sophisticated products creating a solutions market with different corporate strategies? How do manufacturing companies decide to organize (‘internally’ or ‘externally’) their solution offerings depending on the impact of several factors? The factors being examined are: differences in market situation, the complexity of goods and services in the wind turbine industry, use of ‘big data’ and analytics, the institutional ‘set up’ (institutions and institutional arrangement) in the company’s service eco-systems and their customer relations.