Opportunities for servitization in chemical companies

Abstract

It is the increase in the importance of services what is one of the typical features in the current stage of the development of market economies. Industrial manufacturing is thus changing. Instead of accepting the “truth passed on” that competitiveness can only be achieved through offering cheaper, faster, or better products, the manufacturers perceive themselves more and more as service providers who offer complete solutions instead of mere products. The chemical industry in the Czech Republic faces a number of global challenges. The cost of achieving harmony with newly implemented environmental and safety standards valid in the European Union make production unproportionally more expensive, and if we add to it still significantly lower labour costs in the Southeast Asia, this results in a starting handicap that companies have to compensate by some other specific advantages or competences. With a certain level of simplification, it is possible to say that, while the chemistry commodity strives to be as cheap as possible, specialized chemistry aims to be as original and flexible as possible. The possible way of how to achieve the competitive advantage can be found in the new business model of servitization. It represents a trend of moving from the traditional product-oriented marketing towards a product-service combination strategy, where a product is complemented with the respective service to increase the product added value. Therefore, this paper aims to pay attention to the possible concepts of product-and-service integration and to identify services that are suitable for servitization. This study offers the results of an analysis of the web pages concerning the chemical companies operating in the Czech Republic from the point of view of services they specify and, consequently, may offer.