A Bibliometric Analysis of Product-Service Systems’ Design Methodologies: Potential Root-Cause Identification of PSS’ Failures

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

thank you for the opportunity to review this article. It contains interesting and thought-provoking ideas but I have several initial doubts which I will indicate below.  

Firstly, the content does not appear to focus on sustainability which is not practically considered. Sustainability is the focus of the issue to which it is submitted for publication. 

Secondly, it is not justified why the analysis is done in engineering journals when the focus is put on management: defining the business model.

Thirdly, the gap covered by the research and the relevance of the research question should be developed. 

Fourthly, the literature review should be extended to establish the different elements of the analysis and their interrelationship. For example, product, service and PSS are defined but the concept of business model is not developed, nor is it clear what the business model will refer to (design of new PSS?) or what the starting point is (products only, other products and services,...). The importance of interrelationships should also be developed. And although in a business model all of them are necessary, the peculiarities of the services may make it more necessary to focus on some of them in particular.

Less relevant, the value proposition is not defined either, so it is not clear for example, why "Product as defined by AMS could be assimilated to the value proposition”.

In my opinion, the importance given to Putnam's paradoxes (even in the abstract) may be somewhat excessive. It is interesting but it is not analysed in the articles so it creates expectations that are not fulfilled afterwards.

Fifth, the relevance of the keywords must be properly justified as it is very important for the analysis.

Sixth, Conclusions should be developed. Perhaps, it could be interesting to identify potential relationships or tensions that have been less studied and justify their importance ...

Finally, it is surprising that the only pole that does not have relationships is the relationship with the client, which is usually considered by the literature a key aspect of servitisation due to the more relational nature of services.  Only two of the articles mention it, why?

Regarding formal aspects, there are some typos and some abbreviations precede the word.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

I firstly want to thank your for the comments and insight you have made regarding our work. We tried to give you answers to all of them in the attachement as well as in the revised manuscript.  We change deeply certain part of it as your comments made us realized that that we lacked clear focus in some paragraph. 

Kinds regards, 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

First of all, I would like to thank the authors for their efforts describing products, services, BM,  PSS systems and paradoxes. I am really grateful because they have give me several clues as how to improve my teaching sessions.

Being said that, I ama afraid  I can not recommend the publication of the article.

The formal aspects can be improved easily:  a more fair citation system when multiple authors are responsible for the article that is being cited (e.g.: XXX et al.) or correction of  the multiple messages stating: Error! Reference not found.

But the content needs a thorough revision and reformulation:

2. The methodology does not search for PSS ´paradoxes as authors state in 2.3.2.
3. So the final conclusion (lines 641-649) can hardly be supported by the results of the analysis. The inference made is very weak.
4. Authors must justify why “extended Engineering literature” is made operative in two the two journals they analyse.
5. Introduction and 2.1 sections are very much written as a teaching note rather than in an academic form.
6. In my humble opinion, references to sustainability or carsharing are not very much related with the core of the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

I sincerely thank you for your insight regarding our work that gave me the opportunity to question and I hope improve it . I hope that our answers as well as the revised manuscript will fulfill initial doubts and comments. 

You will find attached the answers. 

Kind regards, 

Jean-Robert AGHER

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

although a clear improvement can be seen through the changes made, there are some doubts that persist, some of them relevant, from my point of view. My comments are included below.

• The link to sustainability is still not developed, although section 2.1 is interesting, but there is a lack of literature development in the area, including references such as those indicated in the call of the special issue.
• A brief reference to the objectives of the research and their justification as well as how they are to be answered, more precisely, would be necessary in the introduction.
• Sections 22.2 and 22.3 could be reduced to the most relevant aspects for the article and included in the subsequent one 2.2.4.
• In relation to section 2.2.5 it would be interesting to refer to the PSS in the highlighted concepts, for example by giving examples of the structuring notions and the typology of responses in the field of sustainability.
• In the explanation of poles, neither KR nor CS are clear. Also, it would be interesting to include in all the descriptions some examples in the context of PSS in section 2.2.6, especially in 348 onwards. Around 345, why has CS not been included as in the example explained in 2.1 above?
• A justification for the choice of the key words, Product-service and design, has been included, but there is no reference to the others: Method and Methodology. On the other hand, why is there no reference to the business model?
• In fact, statement 551-554 could be due to the keywords used. “We 552 can deduce that  there is no nor little interest in the management literature regarding ways to conceive PSS”. Perhaps others like business model development, generation, innovation,…, would give completely different results than “Method” or “methodology”, not so often used in management literature.
• I insist on the justification of the research questions as presented.  The articles usually attempt to contribute to a particular aspect. The articles reviewed do not  consider comprehensive methodologies in many cases.  It is the right question as formulated? « Q1: Do existing PSS design methodologies appealed of BM take into consideration 6 all the BMI's known poles, and how »
• “To illustrate our point, we can notably encourage research on the interactions between Customer Segment and Delivery Channel. Even though this interaction might be  considered in a separate upstream design step (namely strategic marketing in traditional companies), there is still need to integrate / design them during PSS design. Indeed, for an unchanged Value Proposition, designer might have to adapt delivery channel, therefore influencing the Customer Segment and ultimately Cost and Revenue” 734-739

The above paragraph is not clear. Please, rewrite and develop in the PSS context. In addition, ¿how can be an unchanged value proposition in PSI?

• Please pay attention to the abbreviations used, in some cases different pe. Customers (figure 3), CS (85) and CSe (324). There are also some typos in the capital letters pe. in 404-413.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you for this thoughtful insights that gaves us the opportunity to question our work and we hope improve it as you will judge. Please find attached answer and revised manuscript.

Kind regards, 

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is crystal clear that the authors the authors have made a great effort in focussing the purpose of the article, and this in itself is a great achievement. So, big applause from my side. Despite of this great job, I think that it can be improved.

Sustainability and PSS´ failures and Paradoxes. Literature review.

Authors try to relate their research objectives with sustainability (mainly, environmental one). To do so, they use a case of a given CS experience. There are at least three problems with this:

1. Cars are only responsible for the 15% of CO2 emissions, vide: Road transport: Reducing CO2 emissions from vehicles | Climate Action (europa.eu)
2. Contribution of CS to the reduction of CO2 emissions is quite small, vide: Does car sharing reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Assessing the modal shift and lifetime shift rebound effects from a life cycle perspective - ScienceDirect
3. The cause of failure in the example chosen by the authors is not related with environmental sustainability.

So, I think that the authors should find another way of finding a relationship between both concepts. To do so, maybe a good idea is to begin with the bibliography recommended by the editors:

1. Bustinza, O. F., Gomes, E., Vendrell‐Herrero, F., & Baines, T. (2019). Product–service innovation and performance: the role of collaborative partnerships and R&D intensity. R&D Management, 49(1), 33-45.
2. Bustinza, O. F., Vendrell-Herrero, F., Gomes, E., Lafuente, E., Opazo-Basáez, M., Rabetino, R., & Vaillant, Y. (2018). Product-service innovation and performance. International journal of business environment, 10(2), 95-111.
3. Opazo-Basáez, M., Vendrell-Herrero, F., & Bustinza, O. (2018). Uncovering productivity gains of digital and green servitization: implications from the automotive industry. Sustainability, 10(5), 1524.
4. Hojnik, J. (2018). Ecological modernization through servitization: EU regulatory support for sustainable product–service systems. Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law, 27(2), 162-175. 
5. Tukker, A. (2015). Product services for a resource-efficient and circular economy–a review. Journal of cleaner production, 97, 76-91.
6. Spring, M., & Araujo, L. (2017). Product biographies in servitization and the circular economy. Industrial Marketing Management, 60, 126-137.

In fact, some of the editors, have published, as well papers on green servitization:

a) Opazo-Basáez, M., Vendrell-Herrero, F., & Bustinza, O. F. (2018). Uncovering productivity gains of digital and green servitization: implications from the automotive industry. Sustainability, 10(5), 1524.

b) Marić, J., Opazo-Basáez, M. Green Servitization for Flexible and Sustainable Supply Chain Operations: A Review of Reverse Logistics Services in Manufacturing. Glob J Flex Syst Manag20, 65–80 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-019-00225-6.

On the other hand, none of the literature review related to PSS systems, Paradoxes or Business Model Innovation is related with sustainability issues (which, by the way, could be a great contribution of the authors. Delving deeper on this, not all the BMI is related to the introduction of Services or to including sustainability in them or both.

Research objectives

If sustainability is a matter of concern of the authors, how is it reflected in Q1 and Q2? ). In this vein, there is a great deal of academic literature to sustainable business models (Check google scholar, for example).

Keywords

If the topic of the article is PSS´failure (and paradoxes) why do not the authors use these two keywords? And sustainable or sustainability?

One can only get answers according to the questions she/he makes. If the keywords do not take into account “failure”, “paradox”, “sustainable” and “sutainability”, how can it be assure that the papers selected are related to these topics?

Results. Content analysis

 The results are related to BM and its building blocks (presence or absence), but what about failure/paradox or sustainability? As commented in the previous notes, if the authors don´t ask about them…

Conclusions and Contributions

Taking into account the “plot” of the paper, conclusions and contributions are quite partial. They are much related to BM and its building blocks, but not so much to the rest of variables/concepts included in it.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you for this thoughtful insights that gaves us the opportunity to question our work and we hope improve it as you will judge. Please find attached answer and revised manuscript.

Kind regards, 

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

D

Dear authors,
in this corrected version, the connection to sustainability can be seen in the literature review. The examples and developments provided also serve this purpose. 
I consider that my main concerns have been addressed. However, I would recommend for publication, to soften the statement:"From our point of view,  this paper demonstrates that companies bypass their difficulties to successfully imple- ment services in new (to themselves) strategic field by collaborating with partners that...".   It may be a possible explanation and, therefore, an interesting line of future research, but the study does not specifically analyse it, nor does it demonstrate it. 

In addition, a final revision of formal aspects is necessary, as I have found some typos such as a single bullet point (around line 148) and the author of the reference (13) is missing (line 439).

Finally, the references are not in order 

Good luck!. I found the article's approach interesting. 

I do not need to have an answer.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thanks again for your feedbacks. We changed the conclusion as suggested and did a final revision of formal aspects accross the document.

Kind regards

Reviewer 2 Report

I congratulate the authors for their effort clarifying the scope of the research,  new conclusions and future lines or research.

I still find that the authors do not take full advantage of the results of the research. The graphs offer by the authors speak “sustainability” and besides crossing PSS and BMC´ 9 building blocks, they could also analyse the implications of those “green nodes” for their research.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thanks you for your toughtfull insights regarding the graphs and its interpretation. We added a paragraph lines 869-875 that will call for future research in the sens you suggested. It is an interesting approach that we will surely add to our research agenda. 

We hope it will fulfill your suggestion, 

Kind regards