Productization and interntional product strategy of K-12 education-related services – a case study

Abstract

Service business has been fast-growing industry during the past decades. Recently, scholars and executives have realized the service industry's dominance in growth of the global economy. However, service development has received remarkably less attention compared to manufacturing.

Finnish government officials have newly perceived the opportunity to exploit high appreciation of Finnish education in growing, international education market. The case company aims at increasing its international presence with K-12 education-related services. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to theoretically and empirically analyze the combination of productization and international product strategy with strong focus on K-12 education-related services.

The author built the theoretical framework based on literature review that analyses different stages of productization of Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and the characteristics of the international product strategy. The productization process includes three main phases: service offering standardization, service offering tangibilization and concretization, and service process standardization and systematization. In international product strategy, high importance is given to standardization-adaptation dichotomy. The empirical data for this thesis was collected through interviewing the case company professionals and external experts in the field.

The results show that K-12 education-related services can be productized to some extent through applying the named methods. Standardization has multiple benefits that can be achieved by developing a core product and supplementing it with more customized or preferably standardized parts and modules. However, flexibility is required in order to match the specific requirements of the target country in terms of culture, legislation and regulations.