Pricing configurations in digital servitization: How industrial firms make digital services commercially viable
2026 (English) In: Industrial Marketing Management, ISSN 0019-8501, E-ISSN 1873-2062, Vol. 137, p. 50-67Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
As industrial business-to-business firms increasingly pursue digital servitization to generate recurring revenues, making digital services commercially viable remains difficult, especially when value capture depends on customer access, data permissions, and intermediary-governed contractual arrangements. Although prior research has emphasized value creation and capability development in digital servitization, we know little about how industrial firms make digital-service pricing commercially viable. In this paper, we undertake a longitudinal exploratory qualitative case study of a leading European OEM operating in a mission-critical context. Our findings make three contributions. First, we develop a pricing-conditions perspective by showing that digital-service pricing depends on data access and interpretability, measurability and attribution, governance positioning, and service architecture and repeatability. Second, we identify four digital-service commercialization patterns of SLA-enhancing, incident-based, predictive, and planning-oriented, and enabling and infrastructural services that explain why digital services differ in how they can be packaged and defended commercially. Third, we develop four pricing configurations, i.e., ad hoc, customized, standardized, and value-based pricing, showing that pricing viability depends less on selecting a pricing approach than on aligning the service's commercial role, customer-value locus, feasibility conditions, and commercial and governance arrangements. In this sense, pricing in digital servitization is better understood as a configurational approach than an isolated price-setting decision and strategy. By doing so, the study extends research on digital servitization and industrial pricing, offering a configurational understanding of how, and under what conditions, digital-service pricing becomes commercially viable.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages Elsevier, 2026. Vol. 137, p. 50-67
Keywords [en]
Digital servitization, Digital services, Pricing configurations, Value capture, Systems integrators
National Category
Business Administration
Research subject Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-119234 DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2026.07.006 ISI: 001828886100001 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105044897646 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-119234 DiVA, id: diva2:2091417
Note Funder: Danish Industry Foundation;
Fulltext license: CC BY
2026-08-112026-08-112026-08-19 Bibliographically approved