Together or Alone? Value Creation Logics in Internationalised Service Firms

Services firms have attracted due research interest of scholars. The business model literature argues for a greater attention to defining and classifying firms and emphasises the importance of activities in this regard. The nature of the service act pertains to either the tangible action targeted at people’s bodies or the intangible action directed at people’s minds. Restaurants and haircutting are prominent examples of the former and education or information services are examples of the latter. Location-intensive soft services involve intangible actions and tangible products; examples are retailing, fast food and vehicle rentals, which are in line with the category of “possession procession services”. The soft services that qualitied as information-intensive involved intangible actions directly targeted at customers through the provision of information-based solutions using the transformation of input information into output information, e.g., management consulting, market assessment, design and engineering, software development.