Service volume and value chain position of service oriented manufacturers

The main purpose of the article was identification of the relationship between service volume (share of revenues from sales of services) and position in the value chain of the service business oriented manufacturing companies. Service orientation is regarded as a crucial strategy or capability that helps organizations stay competitive in today's uncertain business environment. The adoption of service orientation by manufacturing firms can be associated with changes in the positions that firms' occupy in their industry value chain. The current state of knowledge does not give answers questions whether, and if yes, then which kind of service orientation contributes to achieving better results depending on the place in the value chain? Hence, in this paper the focus was placed in particular on examining the relationship between the place in the value chain and two highlighted service orientations i.e. services in support of the product business orientation (SSP BO) and services in support of the client's actions business orientation (SSC BO). Each orientation has been operationalized separately in the form of three dimensions of service orientation, i.e. 1. type of offered services (scope), 2. scale of services provided (i.e. the range of clients who use the services) and 3. proactivity of companies in offering them to its customers. The research was carried out on a sample of 138 polish manufacturing companies from nine different industries. Surveys were used for data collection in which senior executives were the respondents. Research has shown that there is a relationship between SSC BO and the share of service sales in the revenues, but at the same time, such relationship was not confirmed in the case of SSP BO. The average level of share of revenues from sales of services that are achieved by enterprises located in the lower part of the value chain is not higher than the results of enterprises in the upper part of the value chain.