Smart Homes as Product-Service Systems: Two Focal Areas for Developing Competitive Smart Home Appliances

Abstract

Smart homes are a strong match for the characteristics of product-service systems (PSSs), but practitioners lack the knowledge necessary to approach their designs from a systemic perspective. Positing that smart home appliances (SHAs) are the building blocks of smart homes as competitive PSSs, this article investigates the attributes of SHAs as design elements and the advantages of PSSs as design goals. Based on systematic literature reviews and interviews with SHA experts in South Korea, the authors propose a revised set of SHA attributes and discuss the two focal areas for developing competitive PSSs with SHAs: smartness for personalized user experiences and smartness for expanded cooperation. The article contributes to the fast-changing smart home industry by capturing the attributes that define today’s SHAs, demonstrating that these attributes can contribute to the development of smart homes as a competitive PSS, and identifying areas of focus for those who develop SHAs and systems.