eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Service modularity is gaining ground, as companies move away from simply offering traditional products to offering more services. Modularity offers a compromise and ability to combine customization and standardization in order to develop services more efficiently for the end customer. However, until now there has been limited research in the field of service modularity, mainly because of the heterogeneity of services, role of people in service personalization and customization and the nature of services as both products and processes. Therefore, there is a need to provide a more systematic point of analysis of modularity and customization in the pure service industry. The objectives of this research is to revise the framework on combining modularity and customization proposed by Bask et al. (2011) by developing own measurement criteria for modularity and customization and applying it to the pure service industry. The framework is revised by looking from both service offering and service production perspective. Case study is chosen as the principal research strategy for empirical part of this study. Three consulting companies from different areas (IT, management and strategy) within the consulting industry were selected as case companies. Semi-structured interviews were used as the primary method to collect data and questions were pre-defined beforehand. According to the responses provided each company was placed within the revised framework. The results of this study reveal that the revised framework is applicable in context of services. By developing and adding the measurement instrument with a well-defined scale the framework becomes more integrated and cohesive. According to the results each of the interviewed company fell into different quadrant within the revised framework and its position did not change significantly if looking from the service offering or service production perspective. IT and strategy consulting are seen as the brunches of consulting that moved the most towards modularization. Many companies can utilize this revised framework internally to evaluate their own strategy or/and benchmark against their competition in the market.