The Selection Of Service Strategies In Manufacturing Companies Based On Market-based View

Since the1980s, the world continues to accelerate the process of economicintegration. Complex and volatile market environment outside the manufacturingcompanies makes the personalized customer demands of products grow.Diversified customer demands force the manufacturing companies to explorenew ways to enhance the competitiveness continually. Many world-renownedmanufacturing companies, such as GE, IBM, R&R, Siemens, etc., increase theinvestment of service business in the business activities, which makes theproportion of service revenue in total income increase and achieve goodperformance. The increase of service business in manufacturing companies hasbecome an effective way to obtain competitive advantage and improveperformance. And the service-oriented trends in manufacturing companies arebecoming evident.Business and academic give a lot of attention to service strateg y formanufacturing companies. But the results are not same, in which themarket-based view and the resource-based view are most famous. Themarket-based view focuses on the alignment between service strategy and marketenvironment, while the resource-based view emphasizes that service strategyshould match the resources and capabilities. These two views have played asignificant role in promoting the development of manufacturing companies inspecific periods. But facing today’s dynamic, complex and diversified externalenvironment, manufacturing companies starting from a certain point has beendifficult to obtain competitive advantage and improve performance. Therefore,some scholars who have a deep study of the two theories find that these twotheories are actually two sides of a coin. Only these two theories are in harmony,can the formulation of services strategy in manufacturing companies play a goodrole in guiding and achieve good performance. Meanwhile, some scholarsanalyze the formulation of service strategy in manufacturing companies from thealignment of strategic point. They think service strategy should be consistentwith business strategy and competitive strategy. Based on this, the paper analysesthe formulation of service strategy in manufacturing companies under differ entsituations based on the market-based view.Based on IMSS（International Manufacturing Strategy Survey）in2009, thepaper has an empirical analysis on the relationship between the marketenvironment and service strategy, the effect of manufacturing capacity on therelationship between the market environment and service strategy, the effect ofcompetitive strategy on the relationship between the market environment and service strategy and the effect of competitive strategy on the relationshipbetween manufacturing capacity and service strategy. The research shows thatthe market environment has a significant effect on the formulation of servicestrategy, that manufacturing capacity and competitive strategy have a regulatingeffect on the relationship between the market environment and service strategy,and that competitive strategy has a mediating effect on the relationship betweenmanufacturing capacity and service strategy.Based on the above analysis, the paper analyses the empirical results basedon the market-based view, the resource-based view and the alignment of strategy.And the paper sorts the relationship between the market environment and servicestrategy into different situations. From the direct effect of the marketenvironment situation, different situations (the regulating effect ofmanufacturing capacity or competitive strategy), complex situations (thecomposite regulating effect and the mediated regulating effect of manufacturingcapability and competitive strategy), the paper analyses the selection of servicestrategy in manufacturing companies, summarizes the selection of servicestrategy in specific situations and offers some suggestions for the formulation ofservice strategy in manufacturing companies.