An Inductive Approach to Theorizing about Digital Services and Quality Factors

The meaning of service in academia and practice has been changing and is increasingly broad and unclear. The number of competing and overlapping definitions of services, with varying degrees of applicability for digital services, itself presents serious challenges both for academics advancing digital services research, and for practitioners hoping to benefit from the insights provided by scientific studies. The increasing diversity of disciplines engaged in service science calls for a comprehensive synthesis of the chief insights in their scattered studies. To advance knowledge, integrative and cross-disciplinary thinking is needed. Research progress can be made if we achieve a common and agreed language to study digital services. Thus the purpose of this research project is 1) to provide a greater conceptual understanding of the nature of digital services and its quality factors in different service contexts; 2) to achieve research integration across disciplinary boundaries; and 3) to empirically validate core digital services concepts with experts in the information systems, computer sciences and service marketing fields. Dual theoretical achievements are expected: First, in terms of integrating key theoretical perspectives on services research. Second, in recognizing and incorporating the emergent dynamic role of context that is critical to the advancement of science in general. This kind of expanded understanding that identifies genuine contextual variables can provide opportunities for management interventions aiming to improve the design and delivery of future internet services. The specific methodological approach is directed to developing an empirically grounded explanatory framework of cognitions about digital services, eliciting the specific characteristics of digital services and service quality factors in different digital contexts. Such a framework can drive new lines of enquiry about the nature, characteristics, life-cycle, and service quality drivers in various digital contexts. This includes understanding the relationship between digital services and the broader service content in a multi-channel and hybrid environment; and understanding the attributes of automated, adaptive, self-correcting, co-created, crowd-sourced and customer compliance based services. The kinds of streams of empirically studied factors which positively or negatively impact service quality in the various digital services contexts will be identified, categorized, conceptualized and explained. I will argue that the expertise of the Information Systems (IS) and Computer Sciences (CS) communities is needed to theorize about new and more germane characteristics of digital services. The more technical research communities should cease their normal sole reliance on insights and measures from the service marketing literature, a traditional set of puzzle-solving solutions from a research stream which has reached the end of its natural life cycle and which may not reflect the various contexts of contemporary digital services. I will show why the technological aspects of digital services concepts should be brought to the forefront to make clear the unique, specific contributions of our discipline.

The project concept centred on the clear conceptualization, measurement, and management of digital services. This was to be achieved by working across the social and technical sciences, to capture the contribution of both to the design and delivery of digital service quality. The project cooincided with one of the most extensive periods of change in the digital service landscape since the inception of digital services in the 1990s. New technologies such as blockchain have been extensively rolled out to support service delivery. Collectively, this has created a vast, ubiquitous, diverse and complex digital service landscape that made some of the original project goals unrealistic to consider in a holistic manner. Instead, the project adopted a narrower focus on education, human resources and the government sector. The project resulted in multiple, research-informed new product and service designs including global job boards, regional job boards, and specialist/niche job boards, as well as tools for job seekers. In the education area, the project resulted in product and service designs for multiple online learning masters programs with a very high uptake in the technical university sector in particular. Other advances informed by the program include methodological approaches for technology and AI-ingrained service designs, for example, approaches for technology-based service innovation and for public sector digital innovation. Informed by research and practice in digital delivery of education services the project highlighted the increased risk of cybercrime as digital channels become the primary, or in many cases, only mechanism for interacting with customers. My research showed that digital service quality cannot be decoupled from comprehensive and robust cyber-secruity management. The uniquity of digital services has switched the balance of power in some areas of my focal business sectors from customers to providers. Some providers "demarket" non-digital channels and require customers to engage in self-service. Considering innovation, the exponentially increasing power and performance of a range of technologies, which is amplified by their interaction (combinatorial) effects means that many service offerings which were previously prohibitively expensive or impossible have become realistic, for example, robotic/AI powered room service robots, home care robots, or AI educational assistants.This has resulted in a paradigm shift in digital service design that gives greater prominence to service innovation based on the emerging affordances (action possibilities) of new technologies in creating value propositions. Related, many new service designs now rely on the ability to work with a "symbiosis" of human and technology agents. Finally, sustainability and expectations of the circular economy, and a desire for "green" services have added an additional dimension of consumer expectations to digital service design and evaluation.