Research On The Relationship Among Customer Concentration,Servitization And Financial Performance

Manufacturing is the fundamental industry of China's national economy.However,with the rise of Southeast Asian manufacturing plants,the Western re-industrialization strategy is in the ascendant,and China's manufacturing industry is facing unprecedented challenges.Chinese manufacturing enterprises urgently need to transform and upgrade,and service innovation provides new ideas for enterprise transformation and upgrading.To this end,the State Council clearly stated in "Made in China 2025" that it actively promotes the development of service-oriented manufacturing.However,for China,which is still in the early stages of transformation,what factors have affected the implementation of service-oriented enterprises? How does servitization affect business performance? This is not only the concern of enterprises,but also the basis for the government to formulate policies.Servitization in manufacturing enterprise is a change from enterprise manufacturing to service extension,and any change must be based on internal organizational resource capabilities and the support of external stakeholders.In view of this,this paper is based on the listed panel data of China's 78 equipment manufacturing enterprises and 117 general manufacturing enterprises from 2013 to 2017,and incorporates customer concentration,strategic flexibility and marketing input into the research scope of servitization.The aim is to compare the equipment manufacturing industry with the general manufacturing enterprise: How does customer concentration affect servitization? What role does strategic flexibility play? What is the impact of servitization on firm performance in China's context? What is the role of marketing investment between servitization and firm performance?The empirical results show that:(1)Whether it is equipment manufacturing enterprises or general manufacturing enterprises,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between customer concentration and servitization.In a certain range,the improvement of customer concentration can promote the implementation of servitization,but when the customer concentration reaches the critical value,the increase in customer concentration is not conducive to the service innovation of the enterprise.(2)Whether it is equipment manufacturing enterprise or general manufacturing enterprise,strategic flexibility has a positive adjustment effect on the inverse U-shaped relationship between customer concentration and servitization.With the improvement of strategic flexibility,enterprises can quickly transform the resources acquired by customers to promote the implementation of service and to some extent eliminate the adverse effects of excessive customer concentration.(3)Whether it is equipment manufacturing enterprises or general manufacturing enterprises,there is a U-shaped relationship between servitization and firm performance.Enterprises will have a certain degree of profit decline at the beginning of service,but with the deepening of service business,corporate performance will show an upward trend.(4)Whether it is equipment manufacturing enterprise or general manufacturing enterprise,marketing investment has a positive adjustment effect on the U-shaped relationship between servitization and firm performance.With the increase of marketing investment,the external product recognition of the enterprise will be improved,which is beneficial to the service-product of the enterprise to rapidly develop the market and improve the performance of the enterprise.This paper takes China's listed manufacturing enterprises as a sample,reveals the impact of customer concentration on the servitization of manufacturing enterprises,and also explores the impact of servitization on firm performance in China's context,and has important reference value for guiding manufacturing enterprise servitization practice.