RESEARCH IN ENGINEERING DESIGN, v.28, no.2, pp.251 - 273
Abstract
As digital convergence has proliferated and products have become smarter, various service concepts have emerged based on the capabilities of products. It has become a main concern to illuminate historical changes and status of service concepts according to the utilisation of product elements to provide valuable information for service development. However, a lacuna still remains in the literature regarding a systematic and quantitative approach on this problem. This study proposes a service evolution map as a tool for analysing the evolutionary paths of service concepts based on the utilisation of product elements. The proposed service evolution map consists of two layers with the time dimension: a product element layer for the utilisation of product elements and a service concept layer for the evolutionary paths of service concepts. Based on the service documents describing what the services are, text mining, co-word analysis, and modified formal concept analysis are employed to develop the product element and service concept layers, respectively. A case study of mobile application services is presented to illustrate the proposed approach. This study is expected to be a basis of future research on the interaction between products and services and service concept design based on the creative utilisation of product elements.