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Integrated product and service solutions often do not deliver the desired results since solutions involve joint coproduction between suppliers and customers. This leads to shifts in relational habits and task responsibilities and may cause tensions. These slides cover governance mechanisms that can solve such solution challenges.
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Related Marketing Courses:
Business-to-Business Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Services Marketing
Full Citation:
Colm, Laura, Andrea Ordanini, and Torsten Bornemann (2020), “Dynamic Governance Matching in Solution Development,” Journal of Marketing, 84 (1), 105-124.
Article Abstract:
Facing competitive and commoditization threats, many companies shift to solution offerings, albeit with mixed results. With a qualitative analysis of dyadic data (suppliers and customers), this article investigates an important, often overlooked reason for such mixed outcomes: the complex, dynamic role of governance matching. This study identifies a series of tensions arising from solution-specific exchange conditions and the matched governance mechanisms actors use to address them: temporary asset colocation, network closure, knowledge-based boundary objects, rights allocation agreements, and liaison champions. It also reveals the dynamic nature of governance matching. Solutions evolve in three phases—experimentation, integration, and evolution—in which single mechanisms have different functions (safeguarding and/or coordination), provide contingent and transient benefits, and can be used in combination to address complex tensions. This study also identifies two decision points, mutual commitment and balanced power, that separate the three phases; their outcomes help explain why certain solution efforts do not take off, others stall, and still others revert to mere spot exchanges. Beyond contributing to solutions literature, these findings provide actionable insights to marketing managers.
Special thanks to Kelley Gullo and Holly Howe, Ph.D. candidates at Duke University, for their support in working with authors on submissions to this program.
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Laura Colm is a doctoral student, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Andrea Ordanini is BNP Paribas Professor of Marketing and Service Analytics, Bocconi University, Italy.
Torsten Bornemann is Chaired Professor of Marketing, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.