Understanding value created by KIBS: a business customer perspective

Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) hold a key place in the current research agenda. This is mainly due to the fact that, with the rise of knowledge economy, their importance has gradually increased as well as their overall impact on economy. However, in comparison with the manufacturing sectors, KIBS sector remains poorly studied. This paper attempts to enrich the existing literature on KIBS, by providing some insights, theoretically founded, concerning an area where little prior research has been done, i.e., the description and assessment of service value dimensions from a business customer’s perspective. In particular, on the basis of a literature review, eight different value dimensions are identified and described. These dimensions represent the building blocks of a conceptual model proposed for assessing the value created by KIBS for business customers.