Knowledge intensive business service (KIBS) firms' use of visualization for customer participation and knowledge sharing during the service process

Customer participation is central to the service production and delivery processes of knowledge intensive business service firms. The customer can provide knowledge, effort, and decisions on problems and solutions, but the often intangible and abstract service offerings and discussions can be challenging. Recent research suggests that visualization can help customers understand service offerings and support productization, but the critical link between customer participation and visualization has yet to be researched. This paper explores this link through a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with twenty-five service representatives from nine Danish advertising agencies. We develop a framework that describes four customer participation activities focused on visualization. In two activities, probing (the problem) and selecting (the solution), the visualization acts as a cue for the service providers' and customers' knowledge sharing. In mapping (the problem) and exploring (the solution), the visualization acts as a manifestation of the KIBS firm and customer knowledge sharing. The research shows that the application of the activities varies across projects depending on the contextual factors of tasks and customer relations. KIBS firms benefit from applying more visualization activities throughout the service process when dealing with complicated tasks and new customers, compared to simple tasks and existing customers.