Examining the contingent effect of market orientation and knowledge specificity on codesign and co-production of B2B professional service firms

This study examines the extent that a firms’ market-orientation impacts its collaboration with the customer to design and deliver professional services. Our study advances understanding about the conditions under which market-oriented service firms engage in customer collaboration to jointly design and deliver services. In particular, data from business-to-business professional service firms in Iran indicate that the market-oriented service firm’s efforts to develop relational-processes that are required to engage in customer collaboration in the service design and production stages vary based on specific contextual factors. Our results show that high levels knowledge specificity lessens the tendency to collaborate with customers in both design and production stages. Further, market-oriented service firms are more likely to develop relational-processes to collaborate with customers in the design stage, when the level of service innovativeness is high.