| Abstract [eng] |
This study focuses on the farmers’ business model and its evolution when it is gradually shifting from agricultural production to a servitized business model. The research aims to reveal the ways of servitization in agriculture by analyzing farmers’ motivation to switch from product-oriented business logic to service-oriented business logic and by identifying the strategies applied in the innovative business model “product plus service”. The research was carried out by combining systematic analysis of research work on servitization and agricultural production strategies with case studies of farming servitization projects implemented in Lithuania. Although servitized business models are already used quite often in the farming practices, its have not been analyzed in the scientific literature so far not only in Lithuania, but also in the whole world. The novelty of the research is that it is based on a theoretical approach that has not been used in research on servitization until now – the theory of qualitative structures, which helped to find many new insights useful for improving farm management and socio-economic development of countries and regions. The first part of the study discusses why servitization should be considered as a key paradigmic innovation of the business model in the post-industrial stage of societal evolution, as well as the benefits of introducing this innovation to agricultural development. The second part of the study introduces the qualitative structure approach, which has been chosen as the theoretical basis for conceptualizing the evolution of farming from a “product-oriented” to a “service-oriented” business model. The main strategies applied according to the theory of qualitative structures within the boundaries of the “product-oriented” business model prevailing in the agricultural sector and the subjective and objective barriers to their implementation are discussed. The third part of the study, using the case study approach, aims to link farmers’ motivation to move from a purely agricultural product-oriented business model to a “product plus services” business model, with the possibility of bypassing the barriers of their agricultural product-oriented strategies. In the fourth part of the study the results of theoretical and empirical research are summarized, presenting the motivation, benefits and obstacles of the transition to servitized business in farming, as well as conceptualizing the configurations and design logic of the business model “product plus services”. The research is useful and important not only to scientists and practitioners interested in servitization of farming, but also to those who are interested in servitization of manufacturing industry, because it reveals many new theoretical insights on servitization, which are difficult to observe when analyzing servitization of manufacturing enterprises only. |
