Introduction

Abstract

The increasing employment of information and communication technologies in companies and households has not only led to considerable changes in the way services are conceived, developed, and delivered, it has altered the nature of services themselves (Bitner, Brown, and Meuter 2000; Meuter et al. 2000). The convergence of technologies such as e-commerce, ubiquitous computing, and mobile communication is emerging as a promising new paradigm with the goal to provide services anytime, everywhere, and transparently to the user via devices embedded in the physical environment. New "intelligent products" contain IT in the form of microchips, software, and sensors and are able to collect, process, and produce information (Rijsdijk, Hultink, and Diamantopoulos 2007). Network technology embedded into such devices allows for connecting these objects to producers and customers enabling automatic identification, localization and remote sensor technologies (Jonsson, Westergren, and Holmström 2008; Lyytinen and Yoo 2002). This poses not only technical, social, and organizational challenges for product producers. It also has a strong impact on possibilities for service provision as the continuous data flow from embedded IT-applications enables seamless services delivered in real time, and directed at connected objects (Fano and Gershman 2002).