Adoption of Service Innovations in a Business-to-Business Context: An Interdisciplinary Research Project within the Software Industry

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While there is a large body of research regarding the adoption of innovations at a consumer level, these decisions are under researched in a business-to-business (B2B) context. This particularly applies for service innovations, which is surprising since this type of innovation offers substantial growth opportunities for companies producing goods as well as services.Because of their key role as drivers for future growth in many industries, the understanding of factors influencing the buying decisions of customers is critical to the success of providers of service innovations. B2B purchase decisions are influenced by a variety of different factors, which are extremely complex (for example, these decisions are often made by several people in a buying-center and the selection process takes often several months).The proposed research project addresses this challenge by developing an integrated model for B2B adoption of service innovations, based on the example of the software industry. The software industry is characterized by a high variety of different B2B services, a relatively high share of services in sales, and a large number of innovation endeavors. Drawing on the conceptual model, the project investigates how providers of service innovations can systematically increase B2B adoption rates and, thus, are able to achieve the timely diffusion of their products in the market. In this vein, relationship characteristics as critical success factors in a B2B context are in the focus of this research project. In addition, characteristics of the service innovations as well as characteristics of the buying-center are considered in the research model.