Service Blueprinting in Irregularity Service Improvement, case Swissport Finland Ltd

The trend of concentrating to core competencies leads to outsourcing of non-core activities. One such activity is logistics, where the responsibility is given to third-party service providers. This means the service provider acts as an intermediary between the buyer and the end customer. This thesis concentrates on depicting the operational environment of one such service provider, Swissport Finland Ltd, and the improvement of their checked baggage irregularity service. The tools used for this work were service blueprinting, an illustrative method for service mapping, and failure modes and effects analysis. The theoretical part of the thesis offers a framework for using these tools for logistics services, while the empirical part consists of a study mostly qualitative in nature. Action research method was used for the service improvement research. According to the results of this study the combination of service blueprinting and FMEA can be used successfully for irregularity service improvement. The most important result was an enhanced irregularity process that has been found to alleviate earlier problems.

Mobile clinics in public health care: Integrated service offerings for rural elderly

This research is an analysis of the value and content of local service offerings that enable longer periods of living at home for elderly people. Mobile health care and new distribution services have provided an interesting solution in this context. The research aim to shed light on the research question, ‘How do we bundle services based on different customer needs?’ A research process consisting of three main phases was applied for this purpose. During this process, elderly customers were segmented, the importance of services was rated and service offerings were defined. Value creation and service offering provides theoretical framework for the research. The target group is South Karelia’s 60 to 90-year old individuals and the data has been acquired via a postal questionnaire. Research has been conducted as exploratory research utilizing the methods of quantitative and social network analysis. The main results of the report are identified customer segments and service packages that fits to the segments’ needs. The results indicate the needs of customers and the results are additionally analysed from the producer’s point of view. In addition to the empirical results, the used theory framework has been developed further in order for the service-related theories to be seen from the customer’s point of view and not just from the producer’s point of view.

Reframing the relationship between service design and operations: a service engineering approach

The significance of services as business and human activities has increased dramatically throughout the world in the last three decades. Becoming a more and more competitive and efficient service provider while still being able to provide unique value opportunities for customers requires new knowledge and ideas. Part of this knowledge is created and utilized in daily activities in every service organization, but not all of it, and therefore an emerging phenomenon in the service context is information awareness. Terms like big data and Internet of things are not only modern buzz-words but they are also describing urgent requirements for a new type of competences and solutions. When the amount of information increases and the systems processing information become more efficient and intelligent, it is the human understanding and objectives that may get separated from the automated processes and technological innovations. This is an important challenge and the core driver for this dissertation: What kind of information is created, possessed and utilized in the service context, and even more importantly, what information exists but is not acknowledged or used? In this dissertation the focus is on the relationship between service design and service operations. Reframing this relationship refers to viewing the service system from the architectural perspective. The selected perspective allows analysing the relationship between design activities and operational activities as an information system while maintaining the tight connection to existing service research contributions and approaches. This type of an innovative approach is supported by research methodology that relies on design science theory. The methodological process supports the construction of a new design artifact based on existing theoretical knowledge, creation of new innovations and testing the design artifact components in real service contexts. The relationship between design and operations is analysed in the health care and social care service systems. The existing contributions in service research tend to abstract services and service systems as value creation, working or interactive systems. This dissertation adds an important information processing system perspective to the research. The main contribution focuses on the following argument: Only part of the service information system is automated and computerized, whereas a significant part of information processing is embedded in human activities, communication and ad-hoc reactions. The results indicate that the relationship between service design and service operations is more complex and dynamic than the existing scientific and managerial models tend to view it. Both activities create, utilize, mix and share information, making service information management a necessary but relatively unknown managerial task. On the architectural level, service system -specific elements seem to disappear, but access to more general information elements and processes can be found. While this dissertation focuses on conceptual-level design artifact construction, the results provide also very practical implications for service providers. Personal, visual and hidden activities of service, and more importantly all changes that take place in any service system have also an information dimension. Making this information dimension visual and prioritizing the processed information based on service dimensions is likely to provide new opportunities to increase activities and provide a new type of service potential for customers.

Developing the Product Return Process of a Service Center With Lean Methods

Today lean-philosophy has gathered a lot of popularity and interest in many industries. This customer-oriented philosophy helps to understand customer’s value creation which can be used to improve efficiency. A comprehensive study of lean and lean-methods in service industry were created in this research. In theoretical part lean-philosophy is studied in different levels which will help to understand its diversity. To support lean, this research also presents basic concepts of process management. Lastly theoretical part presents a development model to support process development in systematical way. The empirical part of the study was performed by performing experimental measurements during the service center’s product return process and by analyzing this data. Measurements were used to map out factors that have a negative influence on the process flow. Several development propositions were discussed to remove these factors. Problems mainly occur due to challenges in controlling customers and due to the lack of responsibility and continuous improvement on operational level. Development propositions concern such factors as change in service center’s physical environment, standardization of work tasks and training. These factors will remove waste in the product return process and support the idea of continuous improvement.

Can tourism be sustainable? : service experiences from tourism destinations in Europe

The tourism industry is growing rapidly, and thus there is an urgent need to developing sustainable tourism. The research objective of the thesis is to explore and discuss the concept of sustainability within the tourism industry from a marketing point of view, focusing on the perspective of tourist producers’. The thesis consists of four studies, each of which contains different perspectives to support this overall objective. The first study deals with how a hotel can achieve economic sustainability by creating a high level of customer service delivery using a refined GAP-model. The second study examines how tourist producers at mass tourism destinations work with sustainable tourism as a strategic marketing tool in their tourism product development. The third study addresses economic sustainability at the macro level by estimating the tourism demand for Sweden and Norway in five different countries. In the fourth study, the concept of sustainable mass tourism is developed and analyzed from a conceptual standpoint. Study 1 and study 3 concentrate on economic sustainability from a micro and national perspective. The main contribution of Study 1 is the refined GAP-model, which can be seen as a theoretical contribution to the service marketing research. Study 3 shows that exchange rate trends strongly affect tourists’ choice of destination. Study 2 examines sustainable mass tourism as a strategic marketing tool at the destination level. The conclusions of Study 2 contribute to the findings of Study 4 and consider the tourist producers approach to sustainable tourism. One of the contributions of Study 4 is that the concept of sustainable tourism should be divided into three separate parts; economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability.

Productizing professional marketing services through service blueprinting

The goal of this research is to study how knowledge-intensive business services can be productized by using the service blueprinting tool. As services provide the majority of jobs, GDP and productivity growth in Europe, their continuous development is needed for Europe to retain its global competitiveness. As services are turning more complex, their development becomes more difficult. The theoretical part of this study is based on researching productization in the context of knowledge-intensive business services. The empirical part is carried out as a case study in a KIBS company, and utilizes qualitative interviews and case materials. The final outcome of this study is an updated productization framework, designed for KIBS companies, and recommendations for the case company. As the results of this study indicate, productization expanded with service blueprinting can be a useful tool for KIBS companies to develop their services. The updated productization framework is provided for future reference.

The role of network externalities in value creating process of the commercial web service for two-sided international markets

Network externalities and two-sided markets in the context of web services and value creation is not very well discussed topic in academic literature. The explosive rise of the Internet users has created a strong base for many successful web services and pushed many firms towards e-business and online service based business models. Thus the subject of this thesis, the role of network externalities in value creating process of the commer-cial web service for two-sided international markets is very current and interesting topic to examine. The objective of this Master’s Thesis is to advance the study of network externalities from the viewpoint of two-sided markets and network effects as well as describe the value creation & value co-creation process in commercial web service business models. The main proposition suggests that the larger network of customers and the bigger number of users the web service is able to attract, the more value and stronger positive net-work externalities the service is able to create for each customer group. The empirical research of this study was implemented for commercial web service, targeted to Russian consumers and Finnish business users. The findings suggest that the size of the network is highly related to the experi-enced value of the customers and the whole value creation process of commercial web targeted for two-sided international markets varies from the value creation for one-sided or pure domestic markets.

Networks and partnerships in third party logistics service production

Third party logistics, and third party logistics providers and the services they offer have grown substantially in the last twenty years. Even though there has been extensive research on third party logistics providers, and regular industry reviews within the logistics industry, a closer research in the area of partner selection and network models in the third party logistics industry is missing. The perspective taken in this study was of expanding the network research into logistics service providers as the focal firm in the network. The purpose of the study is to analyze partnerships and networks in the third party logistics industry in order to define how networks are utilized in third party logistics markets, what have been the reasons for the partnerships, and whether there are benefits for the third party logistics provider that can be achieved through building networks and partnerships. The theoretical framework of this study was formed based on common theories in studying networks and partnerships in accordance with models of horizontal and vertical partnerships. The theories applied to the framework and context of this study included the strategic network view and the resource-based view. Applying these two network theories to the position and networks of third party logistics providers in an industrial supply chain, a theoretical model for analyzing the horizontal and vertical partnerships where the TPL provider is in focus was structured. The empirical analysis of TPL partnerships consisted of a qualitative document analysis of 33 partnership examples involving companies present in the Finnish TPL markets. For the research, existing documents providing secondary data on types of partnerships, reasons for the partnerships, and outcomes of the partnerships were searched from available online sources. Findings of the study revealed that third party logistics providers are evident in horizontal and vertical interactions varying in geographical coverage and the depth and nature of the relationship. Partnership decisions were found to be made on resource based reasons, as well as from strategic aspects. The discovered results of the partnerships in this study included cost reduction and effectiveness in the partnerships for improving existing services. In addition in partnerships created for innovative service extension, differentiation, and creation of additional value were discovered to have emerged as results of the cooperation. It can be concluded that benefits and competitive advantage can be created through building partnerships in order to expand service offering and seeking synergies.