Unraveling the practices of “productization” in professional service firms

SummaryThis paper studies the practices of “service productization” by analyzing the discourse used by practitioners in small professional service firms. The study makes a contribution by describing practices that managers draw upon to cope with the abstract, elusive nature of the professional service, and by discussing the relationship between the marketing discourse operating in organizations and academic discourse in service marketing, which has seldom been empirically studied. The constitution of three productizing practices is described: (1) specifying and standardizing the service offering, (2) tangibilizing and concretizing the service offering and professional expertise, and (3) systemizing and standardizing processes and methods. It is concluded that managers draw on productization practices to translate the abstract service and its creation into exchangeable objects and controllable processes.

► This study applies a practice perspective to study marketing work enacted in PSFs. ► PSF managers use productization practices to make the abstract service exchangeable. ► Productization involves specifying, standardizing, systemizing, and tangibilizing. ► PSFs apply productization because of characteristics of the professional service.