Productization of professional services and its implications for marketing

Abstract

The focus of this research is on productization of professional services in business markets, taking into account the customer and market driven way of operating. The objective is to define a customer and market driven service productization process. The research is a qualitative content analysis based on the current literature and prevailing theories of service development, service productization, services marketing and relationship marketing. As a result of the research, two productization processes are identified. The focus of the first process is on systemizing the internal working methods of a service firm via productization, while the focus of the second process is on productizing professional services in a customer and market driven manner. The latter is suggested to replace the traditional service development methods in both strategically planning the service offerings and in development of new and existing services. As the research is fully relying on theoretical frameworks, to further validate the research outcomes empirical studies on the topic are suggested.