Influence Mechanism Of Expectation Discrepancy On Manufacturing Servitization

With the increasingly homogenization of products,fierce market price competition and higher customer demand,servitization has become an important way for domestic and foreign manufacturing enterprises to transform and upgrade.At the enterprise level,servitization includes two independent but interdependent core dimensions of service offerings(output servitization)and service investments(input servitization).However,servitization involves operational,strategic and financial risks meanwhile,especially advanced services.What’s the motivation for further servitization? Among them,will the performance aspiration gap(below or above aspiration level)affect the service behavior of manufacturers? If so,how will it affect? Is there any differences between the impact on service offerings and service investments? These are the series of problems that need to be solved urgently,which can provide decision-making reference for managers in the process of servitization.The key of this study is to reveal the psychological drivers of decision makers in servitization.There are two major defects in previous studies on servitization:(1)scholars simply regard servitization as the service offerings provided by manufacturers,that is,they focus on output servitization but ignore input servitization at the micro level.(2)insufficient understanding of the drivers of servitization and limited to interviews or observations.Therefore,we gasp the essential characteristics of servitization,focus on two core dimensions of service offerings and service investments,then integrate the seemingly contradictory prospect theory and threat-rigidity hypothesis in the field of behavioral decision-making,explore the influence of performance aspiration gap(below and above aspiration level)which is the most important drivers on servitization.Based on the listed companies of the general equipment manufacturing(C34)and special equipment manufacturing(C35)as the research samples,the results confirm that:(1)Performance feedback both below and above aspiration level are possible to promote servitization,but the attention and decision logic of managers are inconsistent in different situations.(2)There is an inverted U-shape relationship between the performance which is below aspiration and the service offering depth.(3)There is a U-shape relationship between the performance which is above aspiration and the service investment intensity.Then three management points are proposed:(1)The social-based performance aspiration gap can be used as a decision-making reference of servitization.(2)Managers should exert subjective initiative and view the opportunities and threats brought by servitization from a dynamic perspective.(3)To ensure the delivery and successful transfer of services,enterprises need to pay attention to both the output of service offerings and the input of service resources,especially when implementing more complex advanced services.The biggest innovation of this study is to introduce and integrate the prospect theory and the threat-rigidity hypothesis in the servitization field,and expand its application in the range of performance which is above aspiration,especially threat-rigidity hypothesis,to provide an appropriate theoretical perspective in explaining the non-linear relationship between different degrees of aspiration gaps and servitization,open the black box of managers’ psychological decision logic in the process meanwhile,in order to understand the service motivation and timing of the manufacturers more realistically and comprehensively.