Equipment Maintenance Business Model Innovation for Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Digitalization Context: Connotation, Types, and Measuring

Juhong Chen, Ruijun Zhang and Di Wu
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Juhong Chen: School of Economics and Management, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an 710048, China
Ruijun Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an 710048, China
Di Wu: School of Economics and Management, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an 710048, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: The equipment maintenance services have become a new profit center and an important way to gain sustainable competitive advantage for manufacturing enterprises. The business model is an important tool for manufacturing enterprises to derive economic benefits from sustainable competitive advantage in the context of digitalization technologies, such as IoT, big data, and cloud computing. At present, the concept of equipment maintenance business model innovation is still vague, and it is rare to report on the innovation behaviors and types of equipment maintenance business models adopted by manufacturing enterprises. Based on literature analysis of equipment maintenance services and business model innovation, following business model gestalt theory, the concept of equipment maintenance business model innovation is analyzed at the business-level, the types are divided into novel and efficient following value sources—“innovation and efficiency”. The initial scale is developed through literature investigation, semi-structured interviews and expert reviews, and tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis by using the data of two independent large-sample questionnaires. The results indicate that the behavior and types of equipment maintenance business model innovation can be described by two types and 19 items.

Keywords: equipment maintenance; business model innovation; equipment maintenance business model innovation connotation; measuring; digitalization; sustainable competitive advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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