Typology for Industrial Customers in the Subscription Economy

More and more companies in the manufacturing industry are striving to transform from a transactional to a service-driven so-called “Subscription” business model to benefit monetarily from the opportunities offered by Industry 4.0. One hurdle in this transformation is the formulation of the appropriate service offering. While customers’ demands for value provided with the service offering are becoming ever more extensive, the complexity of a combined service offering consisting of product, service, and software (product-service system) is also increasing. In practice as well as in the literature, recurring patterns of specific user types can be identified, which in turn help to standardize the service offering. However, this concrete user and value consideration has not yet been applied to business models in the subscription economy. The two central research methods that are used here are a detailed literature analysis and interviews with experts from the industry. The aim of this work is the identification of concrete customer types and their characterization based on specific features and attributes. With the help of specific customer types, companies in the manufacturing industry should be able to align their range of services in a targeted and user-oriented manner. In addition, the concrete addressing of identified customer types helps to better meet customer requirements and consequently to increase business success.