Towards Tangibility: Developing Management Consulting Services by Identifying Customer Expectations

The number of service providers in management consulting is increasing. To stand out from the competition and to satisfy customer needs, it is vital to understand customer expectations. The case company of this thesis is a management consulting firm specialized in organizational change. Their objective is to develop their services through enhanced customer understanding. Ultimately, the goal is to advance their service marketing in order to increase their sales. The aim of this thesis was defined together with the case company. The aim was to identify customer expectations from two different perspectives: how customers choose and evaluate the relevance of management consulting services for them and what customers expect from client-consultant relationships. These questions are observed in the knowledge base especially through Customer-Dominant, and Service logics and the formation and management of customer expectations. All in all, the multidisciplinary approach of the theories lies in the intersection of business and marketing logics, service marketing, organizational change, and management consulting. The purpose of the thesis was to draft a service concept tangible enough to make the service more understandable for customers and thus facilitate their decision-making while choosing service providers. A service design approach was used in this research-oriented case study to solve the development task. Within the framework of the Double Diamond (Design council 2019) several qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, workshops, customer personas and journeys and service advertisements were implemented. The findings of this study demonstrated that customers evaluate the relevance of management consulting services from the following perspectives: added value of external help, compatibility of consulting firm with the consulting needs, the credibility of their service offering, trust in the consultant’s ability to bring about the desired change, implementation plan including methods used, and the results of the consulting. Expectations towards client-consultant relationships were identified through three customer personas: “the Partner” desiring a partnership, “the Outsourcer” looking for an extra pair of hands together with an outsider’s perspective and “the Expert seeker” in need of specialized competence. The final concept was co-created with the case company. It is based on the above-mentioned findings. The customer expectations identified in this case study offer valuable considerations especially for small management consulting firms for their service marketing