Читать книгу A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu - Страница 45

The proponents of the post-industrial thesis identify the growth of services as the major feature of contemporary economic history and support the reality of the transition from an economy dominated by the industrial sector to one dominated by services. Daniel Bell in the United States, Alain Touraine in France and, before them, Jean Fourastié have been the founders of this post-industrial society (Fourastié 1949; Touraine 1969; Bell 1973). The research studies of Engel and Baumol provide the main foundations of this thesis. Engel’s law postulates that the increase in purchasing power leads to a shift in household demand from basic necessities (especially food) to mainly industrial goods and then to “higher” goods (health, education, leisure), which are essentially services. Baumol’s work has established that productivity growth is on average faster in the industrial sector than in the service sector, justifying the irreversible decline in industrial jobs⁴. Today, major market trends, such as the aging of the population and the preference of younger generations for use rather than possession, only amplify household demand for services. The behavior of companies, by outsourcing a growing number of activities, from the simplest (maintenance of green spaces) to the most complex (human resources management), also contributes to the dynamism of the services market.

In a complementary way, the industrial company feeds into this reality by backing an ever greater share of its added value with service activities. The “servuction” or tertiarization of industry are the terms commonly used today to indicate the potential of services to enhance and differentiate the industrial company’s offer. The growing technical complexity of products naturally leads to the launch of specific services to support their marketing, distribution, consumption and recycling. This is one of the challenges of Industry 4.0, which relies on the Internet of Things and data to offer innovative services that generate new sources of profit.

Finally, at the very heart of development economics thinking, while industry has long been considered indispensable for growth, the idea is now also defended that a country can develop from its service activities without necessarily relying on a solid industrial sector. India illustrates this new path of economic development, with growth based in particular on the export of advanced services, rooted in new technologies (Kucera and Roncolato 2016).