Servitization in manufacturing: role of antecedents and firm characteristics

The process of creating value by adding services to product offerings, or servitization, is a mature theme in the literature, flourishing in recent years. Prior research investigated the impact of servitization measured by the share of services on the performance in terms of growth and stability. However, the impact of service antecedents on the share of revenue was neglected. This research intends to shed light on the impact of service portfolio antecedents on firm performance and to investigate the direct vs. indirect charges of services and the interplay of different firm characteristics and the service business model. We used dataset on 474 manufacturing firms from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Results reveal antecedents as well as implications of direct and indirect charging of services in manufacturing firms. In addition, this study demonstrates the interplay of different firm characteristics and servitization.