When Moving from Products and Services towards Functional Products: Which Sustainability-oriented Customer Values are of Interest?

AbstractThe paper concerns which sustainability-oriented Functional Products (FP) customer values companies, who also provide products and services, consider as important to communicate to customers when offering or planning to offer FP. Currently, the manufacturing industry is showing increasing interest in adding offerings based on additionally complex business models as opposed to merely offering products and services. This is considered necessary if companies are to continue to be able to innovate and stay competitive and profitable in global competition. A considerable focus is directed towards performance- or result-based business models. FP is one such business model, where the provider offers a function to customers at an agreed-upon level of availability, productivity or efficiency. FP comprise the following four main constituents: hardware, software, service support system and management of operation, which together deliver value to customers on a long-term basis. The paper proposes a set of FP sustainability-oriented customer values which are categorized according to the sustainability aspects: economic, ecological and societal, and the set is further analyzed from a regulatory and legal perspective