Subscription services and their dynamic capabilities An exploration of the relationship between dynamic capabilities and service quality

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2021-02-17

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en

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Subscription-based businesses operate in a constantly changing environment, which poses them with numerous challenges. Developing dynamic capabilities could help these businesses with dealing with their environment. This study explores how dynamic capabilities manifest themselves in subscription-based businesses. This is done by extending Teece’s (2007) sense-seize-reconfigure framework with a number of related, more measurable constructs, resulting in a practical framework of dynamic capabilities. This framework is researched in practice with case studies in six firms operating with a subscription-based business model, in order to see how these businesses deal with the proposed capabilities. Subsequently, the relationship between the development of dynamic capabilities and the degree of service quality is investigated. This is of importance, since subscription services rely on the retention of their customers, and service quality is a great indicator for this (Blery et al., 2009; Venetis & Ghauri, 2004). The service quality of the firms is researched by gathering online reviews of the businesses, and qualitatively analysing these according to dimensions of service quality. The results of this study show that for the development of dynamic capabilities, being market-oriented, technology-oriented and having an open culture are key practices for the subscription-based businesses. The results also indicate that a relationship between the development of dynamic capabilities and greater service quality exists. For subscription-based businesses, developing dynamic capabilities can therefore be seen as a great mean for dealing with a changing environment, while at the same time improving service quality and thereby customer retention.

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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen

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