Abstract: For a long time, a relational transaction mode has widely existed in enterprises in China, influenced by cultural customs, imperfect laws and market systems. This leads to a high degree of customer concentration, so enterprises suffer from “reliance on key customers”, which is particularly prominent in manufacturing enterprises. However, relying too much on key customers may increase the operational risk of enterprises and erodes the profit space of enterprises. Especially since the outbreak of the epidemic, the uncertainty and complexity of the external environment have risen sharply, and the “black swan” incidents of key customers have occurred frequently. More and more enterprises begin to re-examine supply chain security, and reduce the excessive dependence on key customers as an important goal of supply chain strategy adjustment and risk control. Therefore, how to alleviate the “reliance on key customers” in manufacturing enterprises has become a practical problem to be solved urgently.
Servitization is an important strategic plan and development trend for China’s manufacturing industry to break through the low-end lock-in of global value chain and realize high-end transformation and upgrading. It is also an important way to enhance the competitiveness of manufacturing industry and achieve high-quality development. As the micro-subject of economic transformation, manufacturing enterprises realize the transformation from product supply to providing “products plus services” and solutions by integrating knowledge, technology and products. This transformation process is the innovation and reshaping of the original business model by adhering to the purpose of being “customer-oriented”. The company can dynamically respond to market demand, optimize the customer’s trading experience, and expand the “siphon” effect of customer scale by developing high value-added derivative services. Therefore, from the theoretical analysis, manufacturing enterprises can strengthen the cooperative relationship with more customers by providing in-depth embedded services, thus reducing their dependence on key customers. Based on this, this paper empirically analyzes and tests the influence and mechanism of servitization on key customer dependence in China, from the perspective of customer relationship governance, taking A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2010 to 2022 as samples. It is found that servitization is conducive to reducing the excessive reliant on key customer resources and optimizing customer resource structure, the higher the level of marketing and managerial ability, the more significant the negative relationship between them. The mechanism test shows that servitization alleviates the dependence of key customers through innovation-driven and cost optimization. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the influence of servitization on the dependence on key customer is more significant in state-owned, large-scale enterprises and enterprises in growth stage. The research conclusion not only enriches the theoretical research on servitization in manufacturing, and offers manufacturing enterprises a practical basis for the implementation of service transformation, but also provides a new solution for solving the “reliant on key customer”.
The contributions of this paper are follows. Different from the existing literature, it mainly focuses on the adverse economic results brought by the dependence on key customers, this paper discusses the role of servitization in reducing the dependence on key customers, and puts forward a new governance path to solve the dependence on key customers; the existing research on servitization effect mainly focuses on the influence of servitization on their own operating results, but this paper analyzes the value of servitization in optimizing customer resource structure from the perspective of customer relationship governance, which enriches the research on servitization effect of manufacturing enterprises to a certain extent; this paper opens the “black box” for servitization to reduce the dependence of key customers. The research shows that enterprises implementing servitization reduce the dependence on key customers through innovation-driven and cost optimization. It provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to deeply understand the potential value of servitization and an effective path for enterprises to alleviate the dependence on key customers.

Key words: servitization in manufacturing enterprises, dependence on key customers, innovation-driven, cost optimization

摘要： 基于我国制造企业中较为突出的大客户依赖现实情境,从客户关系治理视角出发,以2010—2022年A股制造业上市公司为样本,实证分析并检验了我国制造企业服务化对大客户依赖的影响及作用机制。研究发现:制造企业服务化有利于缓减对大客户的依赖程度,实现客户资源结构优化。且市场化水平与管理者能力越高,服务化对大客户依赖的缓减作用越显著;机制检验表明,服务化可以发挥创新驱动效应和成本优化效应来缓解大客户依赖;进一步的异质性分析表明,制造企业服务化对大客户依赖的影响在国有企业、大型企业及处于成长期的企业中表现更加显著。研究结论不仅丰富了制造企业服务化的理论研究,为制造企业实施服务化转型提供现实依据,而且为破解制造企业的“大客户依赖症”,降低经营风险,实现高质量发展提供新见解。

关键词: 制造企业服务化, 大客户依赖, 创新驱动, 成本优化