Purpose and description of the course
This course is about how to successfully compete with services. The service sector has become the backbone of economic development in many countries, including Denmark. Services have repeatedly proven to help companies defend their market share, be resilient, and compete successfully even in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments. Across industries, firms are increasingly adding more services to their existing product portfolio to remain competitive, a process called ‘servitization’. However, such service-based competitiveness requires a deep understanding of customer needs and how to effectively and efficiently address them.
This course provides a toolbox of different concepts, models, and approaches for how any firm can achieve and further develop competitiveness from services. Participants will gain a detailed understanding of the complexities and interdependencies that characterize different service-based business models and how to manage them. Specifically, we will be addressing the following questions:
- What is so special about services and why should firms and customers care about them?
- Service business models: How to get it right?
- Good service quality: How to get there?
- Competitiveness from service provision: How to stay ahead?
Key themes in the course
- Foundations of services marketing and service management
- Opportunities for value creation through services
- Service quality and service recovery
- Ensuring customer centricity in the service business models
- Transforming and infusing existing business models with services
- Digitalization and innovative service business models
Your learning outcome
In this course, you will learn to:
- Define a specific service management problem arising in a practical setting.
- Apply the theories and models of the course to analyze this problem.
- Critically reflect on how to design and analyze processes and delivery models that can support servitization and service management.
Who should attend this course
The course aims at all managers, generalists, and specialists who are interested in learning more about the opportunities of service-based business models and their opportunities to achieve competitiveness.
Are you already working in a service environment? Then this course will help you revise and improve the ways in which you address customer needs and how to stay ahead in light of new technologies and innovative service business models.
Are you working in a product-centric environment? Then this course will help you understand the opportunities of service-based competitiveness, such as new revenue streams, increasing profitability, generating data-driven customer insights, creating closer bonds with customers, or locking out competitors.
