Service-Based vs. Goods-Based Positioning of the Offering: Effects on Customer Perceived Value

To counteract increasing competition and satisfy evolving customers’ needs, many firms are changing the positioning of their offering, from being product-based into service-based. Despite the increasing relevance of this shift, it is still unclear if this choice has a differential impact on customer perceived value. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to analyze customer perceived value for a firm’s offering being positioned either as service-based or product-based. An experiment was conducted using stimuli from two different product categories (hearing aids and bicycles) and measuring customers perceived value through the PERVAL scale’s four dimensions (quality value, emotional value, price value, social value). The results show that presenting the product as service-based instead of good-based can enhance customer perceived value (in particular: quality, emotional and social value), but only if customers are not familiar with the product.