I started out trying to understand how small service firms can compete with other rivals on an increasingly competitive market. From the collected data, I have showed that entrepreneurs in small service firms in Norway leverage information from customer interaction activities go creating new services and thereby being the first mover on the market. Alternatively, some entrepreneurs work towards improve service quality and providing more value to customers. In any case, the entrepreneur accepts the affordable loss, emphasize on effectual activities for improving services for customers.
The study has reached both goals: contributing to literature about service differentiation and providing insights about differentiation strategies in small service firms in Norway. In addition, the empirical evidences show that differentiation strategies can be applied not only in big enterprises but also in small service firms. Entrepreneurs in new ventures or mature companies can do and do well with differentiation strategies. However, due to the lack of literature in this topic, there might need more studies for confirming the results.
Appendix
The interview guide
Each interview is conducted with open questions in semi-constructed type. Therefore, there are some guided questions that I used to keep the interviews on track. There are three main themes for the interviews.
First, the basic information about entrepreneur and company: • Can you tell me about your background?
• Can you introduce your company, the services that you are offering to customers? • How did you come up with the idea to create the company?
Second, the service differentiation:
• How do you differentiate yourself from competitors? • What were the main reasons for you to offer this service?
• Why did you decide to develop this new service for this new market, when you were working in the old market for a while and knew about it clearly?
• You offered a different service before, why did not continue with that? Why have you decided to develop a new service? What make you think that you will be successful with this new service?
• There is a strategy with lower price for getting customers. How do you think about this? How do your customers think about your pricing scheme?
Third, the customer interaction:
• How did you customers respond to your service when the first time they used it? • How do you deal with the customer feedbacks about your service offering? • How do your customers contact you?
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