Trust or Control : How to Manage Behavioural Uncertainty for Industrial Product-Service System Provision?

Offering industrial product-services is argued to result in a significant change in the relational dynamics between provider and customer. The increased service content inherently leads to more co-creation of value with customers but may also increases the risks of opportunistic behaviour from customers. Such behaviour is hard to predict and therefore, understanding how provider can effectively manage such new behavioural challenges when offering industrial product-services is an important research question. The emerging Product-Service Systems (PSS) literature recognizes two ways to mitigate behavioural uncertainly, namely trust and control. However, these two concepts are not clearly understood in relation to managing provider and customer relationship in PSS. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine which conditions influence whether the provider should rely on trust or control to mitigate behavioural uncertainty. From a case study in a Swedish manufacturing company four factors where identified which include the history of the relationship, the customer’s culture, the market and the characteristics of the product.Godkänd; 2014; 20140820 (vinpar)Fastelaboratoriet - VINNEX