■
the type of buyer and provider representatives hierarchical and functional scope of the customer–supplier contacts
Cunningham and Homse, 1986.
Wynstra et al. 2006 propose a classification of business services based on how the buying company uses the service with respect to its own
offerings. They claim that this usage dimension is one of the main determinants of how buyer–seller interaction processes should be
designed. They distinguish between four types of services.
1. Consumption services: these services remain within the buying company and do not affect how the buying company’s pri-
mary processes are carried out e.g. office cleaning services for an airline.
2. Instrumental services: these services remain within the buying company and affect how the buying company’s primary pro-
cesses are carried out e.g. information and communication technology services used to support flight operations.
3. Semi-manufactured services: these services are used as an input by the buying organization for particular offerings to final
customers and are thus passed on to end customers of the buying company e.g. weather forecasts which are transformed
into specific flight schedules.
4. Component services: these services are directly passed on to end customers of the buying company e.g. baggage handling at
the airport. Wynstra et al. 2006 suggest that the type of service affects:
■
the key objectives of the interaction;
■
the type of representatives involved on the buying company’s and the service provider’s side; and
■
the capabilities deemed critical for buyer and service provider. Van der Valk et al. 2006 claim that variation with regard to these
effects may be stronger for services that the buying company perceives as having high risk.
In the present study we are, specifically, interested in how experienced buying companies organize their interactions with the service provider
with respect to the type of representatives that deal with the interaction. We assume that buying companies have implicit “theories” about which
types of representatives are needed for the success of a purchase of a service, and that they differentiate their representation according to
the different types of services. Based on previous research and discus- sions with buyers, we also assume that these companies will estimate the
risk involved in purchasing a service and that they take this into account as well in their decisions about who is going to represent the company
in the after-purchase ongoing interaction. Based on these assumptions, we decided to build a theory of how buying companies actually organ-
ize their interaction in terms of the selection of the kind of representa- tives that are involved in the buyer–provider interaction for the four
types of services and with different levels of perceived risk.
9.2.2 Candidate cases
Because the entities to which our theory applies are instances of the ongoing interaction between buyers and providers of business services
after the purchase of such a service, we needed to look into a number of instances “cases” of ongoing interaction between buyers and
providers of business services. Because our ultimate aim is to build a theory of how the type of interaction influences the success of the pur-
chase, we thought that we should limit this theory-building study only to instances in which the buying companies are experienced buyers of
services and are generally successful in these purchases.
We selected cases from buyer companies that are service companies themselves and not manufacturers for two reasons. First, we pre-
sumed that service companies have a more professional approach to buying services than manufacturing companies. Second, we expected
that the chances of finding two types of services that are passed on to the end customers of the buying company the component and semi-
manufactured services, were larger at service providers than at manu- facturers. We purposefully aimed at selecting large companies with
professional purchasing organizations, since we thought it likely that buyer–provider interaction patterns developed by these companies
would reflect their tacit knowledge of what works well in terms of the eventual success of the purchase.
We conducted our study at two buying companies as opposed to one company, for two reasons: 1 to have multiple observations for each
value of the independent concept the type of service; and 2 to be able to determine whether the variation observed is consistentsystematic
across buying companies, even if these are quite different. We selected two service companies that are very different.
One is a routine service provider, i.e. a company that solves relatively simple problems for its customers Axelsson and Wynstra, 2002. Such
routine services usually involve large numbers of similar, rather standard- ized transactions e.g. establishing ADSL connections, mobile telephony
services. We selected KPN Royal Dutch Telecom, market leader in the major segments of the Dutch telecom market, as the routine service provider in
this study.
The other is a professional service provider knowledge provider, i.e. a company that solves complex problems Axelsson and Wynstra,
2002. Transactions are substantial and involve considerable creative moments in direct contact with the supplier e.g. reintegration trajec-
tories for employees that have been ill or unemployed, conducting medical examinations. We selected UWV, a Dutch institution with
about 18,000 employees responsible for the administration and imple- mentation of insured benefits for around 1,000,000 employees in the
Netherlands, as the professional service provider in this study.
9.2.3 Case selection
KPN and UWV were contacted by means of a formal letter, followed up by a telephone call to set up an introductory meeting. During this first meet-
ing, the case study protocol in which it was specified how the study would be conducted, how much time would be required from company repre-
sentatives, etc. was discussed with the buying company’s primary contact person in order to give the company a clear idea of what we expected
from them and what they could expect from us. After the companies had agreed to participate, a next meeting with the contact person was set up
to identify the services to be studied one instance of each of the four types of services in each company. KPN offered us the opportunity to
study two instrumental services in-depth. Since our informant associated these services with differing degrees of success one highly successful,
one not successful at all, we included them both in our study.
The cases selected at KPN and UWV are listed and briefly described in Tables 9.6A and 9.6B. As the study progressed, the two cases that
were originally selected in the semi-manufactured category were found to fit better in the category of component services. Rather than select-
ing new semi-manufactured cases, we decided to reclassify these cases as component services.
9.2.4 Extracting relevant evidence
We collected data through semi-structured interviews. For each serv- ice, two to three interviews were conducted. One interview with the
buyer involved in sourcing the service focused mainly on the purchas- ing process, whereas an interview with the contract owners andor a user
