Improving productivity is crucial for service firms to be competitive. To have customers perform certain tasks normally undertaken by employees is an important means to achieving this objective. With the aid of technology, the scale and scope of self-service has significantly increased in recent years. Despite the size and importance of technology-based self-service (TBSS) investments in service firms, the absence of empirical studies on TBSS and its impact on company performance has resulted in a significant gap in knowledge. The aim of this thesis therefore was to increase our understanding of this important research area. Drawing from a resource-based view, this thesis proposed a framework that shows how firm resources and capabilities are leveraged via customer performing self-service to deliver superior value to employees, customers and/or business owners. To ground the research, three Swedish TBSS case studies (i.e., SAS self- check-in, Nordea Net Bank, and ICA self-scanning) were conducted. The findings of these case studies helped further refine the framework and a more elaborate model illustrating the impact of TBSS on firm performance was proposed. To test this model, a survey was conducted to understand self-scanning system and its impact on firm performance. Questionnaires were sent to managers and employees at ICA and Coop, the two biggest food chain stores in Sweden. The results of the survey show that employee training and dynamic capabilities of the service provider are crucial to the success of self- scanning implementation. TBSS promotion was found to have no relationship with customer usage and weak relationship with accuracy of customer performing self-service. Furthermore, improved service quality, rather than reduction of labor costs, was found to be the primary value of self- scanning in Swedish retail food stores. Finally, employees and customers are positively affected by using TBSS, although the impact on financial performance is hard to pin down.

E-readiness can be defined as the degree to which a community is prepared to participate in the networked world. In this paper the concept of e-readiness is used in terms of how internal and external factors affect the delivery of online education offered by universities. The paper applies the macro level five forces model as adopted by Chan and Welebir (2003) in the context of micro (university divisional level). Thus, the purpose is not to have generalizable findings, but rather use the delivery of online education as determinant for the level of universities' e-readiness, and explore the factors affecting e-readiness and ways of utilizing the factors as central to the study. Using a qualitative method case study interviews on divisional level were used to obtain in-depth empirical evidence. The study appears to indicate potential need to further modify the five forces model by Chan and Welebir (2003) due to the non-commercial nature of the Swedish education system. Also, co-operation in providing educational services such as the Net University in Sweden precludes market forces determination by universities internally. No specialized training program for the instructors to fit any special needs of students particular to online education was perceived.