Services are key enablers in the transformation toward the circular economy because they provide the prerequisites for sustainable value co-creation. Services in the circular economy include “traditional” offerings such as maintenance and remanufacturing, but also newer types of services in the sharing economy. This chapter discusses three sustainable value co-creation activities in more detail: (1) extending product life, (2) dematerialization, and (3) replacing service systems. It also provides illustrations of services that support sustainable value co-creation and, ultimately, improved environmental sustainability. The chapter concludes by highlighting key challenges for firms and customers involved in sustainable value co-creation activities.

"This prescient Handbook adopts an overarching perspective on service experiences in business contexts. Incorporating up-to-date research and empirical case studies, chapters focus on customer experience design, innovation and management in the digital era. The Handbook of Service Experience sheds new light on the field, presenting novel theoretical and managerial insights to enhance our understanding of this complex area. Global experts from academia and practice contribute by addressing key themes, including theoretically conceptualising the service experience and exploring how to leverage digital technologies to better design, innovate and manage customer experience, whilst also acknowledging sustainability considerations, risks and ethical implications. They present different perspectives across various public and private sectors, such as healthcare and the fast-food industry, as well as B2B services, to improve understanding of what a service experience is, how it can be facilitated, when it occurs, and why it is important. Comprehensive in scope, this unique Handbook is an invaluable resource for students and academics in business administration, digital marketing and service design, and organisational, social and occupational psychology. Its detailed practical applications and examinations of service experience will also be highly beneficial to professionals and entrepreneurs alike"--

Our modern society has created a new service landscape, where new service innovations that are built on digitalization and service infusion are introduced to create better customer experiences. This chapter introduces a service management model which is how service firms can navigate in the new service landscape. Service management is the core and serves as an integral part of a dynamic ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of creating, proposing, and capturing value for. It addresses the challenges of service innovation, service infusion, and digitalization that service firms can use to create better customer experiences. The chapter provides an overview of all contributions drawing on experiences from thought leaders at industrial firms and the Service Research Center (CTF) at Karlstad University in Sweden.

This open access book investigates how digitalization and service infusion are changing service provision and the customer experience. It highlights the central role of service management and service innovation in making these changes not only appear in theory but also implementing them in business practice. At the beginning of the 21st century, many manufacturing firms struggled to exploit the financial potential of service businesses, a phenomenon described as the service paradox. While many manufacturing firms are still struggling with this paradox, several firms (both service and manufacturing firms) are simultaneously struggling with digitalization. This phenomenon can be viewed as the digitalization paradox, i.e., as a situation in which companies invest in digitalization but struggle to reach the expected revenue growth. By applying the lens of service innovation to digitalization and service infusion, the book showcases how firms can overcome the service and digitalization paradoxes, transform service provision, and improve the customer experience. It offers comprehensive coverage, blending literature reviews, conceptualizations, empirical illustrations, and case studies to offer a multifaceted perspective on corporate strategies, illuminating pathways to address the challenges posed by the service and digitalization paradoxes. 

The growing cost of healthcare services, together with increasing demand, is a major concern for the healthcare sector. Innovation, particularly service innovation, has been put forward as a top priority to address the major challenges of healthcare. But how should a healthcare organization balance the needs of tomorrow through service innovation with the needs of today through high-quality care on a daily basis. What development practices and innovation types need to be implemented to deliver high-quality care, now and in the future? Through combining (a) how to work on service innovation with (b) what creates satisfied patients in healthcare organizations, the current study addresses how to balance quality improvement and service innovation. Our conclusions suggest that there are specific development practices that healthcare organizations need to apply to further develop the care of patients.

The growing importance of service has brought greater opportunities for service innovations to influence the market and improve both customers’ and firms’ situations. Despite efforts by firms to develop service innovations, they often fail to introduce new services on the market. Ultimately, customers are the ones to assess, buy, and use a new service. That is why the Swedish Innovation Index was introduced as a customer-centric perspective on service innovation, which measures firms based on customers’ perceptions of their innovations. This allows firms to predict the future adoption of new services and the relative attractiveness of the firms. The Swedish Innovation Index provides a new perspective that is independent of the firm-centric view of innovation. It opens avenues for both managers and academics to observe, predict, and better utilize the potential of service innovations.

In the competitive world of manufacturing, where profit margins deteriorate over time, service infusion might be a way to help a business turn in the right direction. This chapter briefly explains the concepts of servitization and service infusion, before identifying service growth opportunities and obstacles. From a strategy-based perspective, we present a conceptual model that evaluates the current and future growth potential of the service business. We identify four specific service growth strategies and illustrate them through business cases. The service growth strategies represent physical services (free-to-fee and ownership change) and digital services (remote and upgrading).