The Evaluation of the Impact of Internet-Based Technologies on International Service Delivery

In service management studies, internationalisation plays a crucial role due to the increasing importance of international service trade in global economy; trade statistics show that the volume of services traded to foreign markets is constantly increasing and represents a more and more relevant share of the international trade flows. Nevertheless, services, as opposed to goods, present specific features, which strongly influence and limit both the possibility for service firms to internationalise and the entry modes to foreign markets they can adopt. In this context, the use of ICT represents a critical innovation, which may give a decisive contribution to the internationalisation of service firms. In this paper an analysis is proposed of how firms can use Internet-based technologies to deliver their services on-line to foreign markets or to support an off-line international service delivery. The approach we adopt combines service management theories, studies on international service tradability and on the use of ICT in firms. In doing so, we will be looking at “what” is being traded and “how” from an original perspective. Indeed, many authors tend to focus on the international trade of services without differentiating what is relevant for service trade from what refers to service delivery. On the contrary, in our view the delivery of the service – not its sale – is the main object of the internationalisation, and therefore we specifically investigate the alternative ways of delivery a firm can choose to supply its services to foreign markets. This leads to a specific focus on that part of the production and delivery system where the service becomes available to the recipient and is actually consumed. We propose a classification of service delivery modes based on two strategic dimensions – the char-acteristics of the service delivery system and the extent of the interaction between producer and con-sumer in service delivery – which can be represented by a two-by-two matrix. We first use that matrix to identify internationalisation forms of traditional service firms, according to the characteristics both of the services they offer and the delivery systems they implement. Secondly, we evaluate how Internet-based technologies change this framework, making it possible for firms to perform previously infeasible internationalisation processes or to adopt new entry modes to foreign markets.