The Role of Digital Servitization in Transition Economy: An SNA Approach

Abstract

Digital servitization changes the way in which manufacturing firms offer their traditional products. Digital services support manufacturing firms to transform their product-oriented business models to service-oriented business models. Additionally, digital servitization affects manufacturing firms to offer digital solutions for their customers. According to this influence, the manufacturing firms change their ecosystems with the transition from product-oriented services to digital solutions. This paper investigates the ecosystem transformation of manufacturing firms. The current dataset includes 690 observations of manufacturing firms from the Republic of Serbia in the period of five years. The trend of the use of digital services in manufacturing firms was evaluated using a Social Network Analysis. The empirical results indicate that manufacturing firms from transition economies increased the use of digital services by 20% from 2015 to 2020.

Keywords

• digital servitization
• digital services
• manufacturing firms
• product-related services
• social network analysis