Towards customer-induced service orchestration - requirements for the next step of customer orientation

Rainer Alt (), Jan Fabian Ehmke (), Reinhold Haux (), Tino Henke (), Dirk Christian Mattfeld (), Andreas Oberweis (), Barbara Paech () and Alfred Winter ()
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Rainer Alt: Leipzig University
Jan Fabian Ehmke: Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
Reinhold Haux: University of Braunschweig
Tino Henke: Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
Dirk Christian Mattfeld: University of Braunschweig
Andreas Oberweis: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Barbara Paech: University of Heidelberg
Alfred Winter: Leipzig University

Electronic Markets, 2019, vol. 29, issue 1, No 6, 79-91

Abstract: Abstract This position paper acknowledges that customer orientation is a key requirement for companies to be competitive in the marketplace. Customer orientation has led to concepts, such as personalization, one-to-one-marketing, mass customization and co-creation, which all strive for a strong alignment of individual customer demands and encounters with a company’s offerings. Despite the customer is increasingly regarded as an active partner, the overall perspective of customer orientation is still mainly provider-oriented. Adopting the perspective of customers, as argued in this position paper, would help recognizing that customer problems are often broader and more complex than the solutions of single providers. While intermediaries and, more recently, assistants based on artificial intelligence, have emerged to address this demand, their approaches are typically little transparent and follow a black-box paradigm. Using examples from multiple application domains, this position paper proposes elements that need to be addressed to overcome these shortcomings. The concept of customer-induced service orchestration and management shall empower customers to combine services from multiple service providers in order to address their problems in a transparent and white-box way. This approach could represent an important next step in customer orientation.

Keywords: Customer orientation; Service orchestration; Customer empowerment; Customer-induced services; Electronic intermediary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D26 L22 L8 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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DOI: 10.1007/s12525-019-00340-3

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