State-of-the-art in product-service systems

TLDR

A Product‑Service System (PSS) integrates products and services, promoting a service‑led strategy, environmental sustainability, and competitive differentiation beyond low‑price offerings. The paper reviews current PSS literature, defines the concept, outlines its origins, features, applications, benefits, barriers, tools, methodologies, and future research challenges. The authors classify the literature and analyze the major outcomes of each study.

Abstract

A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This Western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarizes available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.