Subscription Business Models in the Manufacturing Field: Evidence from a Case Study

Manufacturing companies operate in global environments where competition is increasingly aggressive. To remain competitive, they need to differentiate themselves by updating and expanding their offerings to customers, for instance through the digitalization and servitization phenomena, which allow companies to innovate business models in this direction. This paper deals with an analysis of the subscription business model, which has recently attracted the attention of manufacturing companies for the possibility to establish long-term partnerships with customers by providing services on a continuous basis in return of recurring payments. After a first analysis of the literature on this topic, the effective implementation of the subscription model in the manufacturing environment is analyzed through a case study. The analysis shows that the development of subscription models is strengthened by the utilization of digital tools since they enable processing customers’ data for new service offering generation, leading companies to differentiate their business towards customer-centric solutions. In conjunction, the case study shows how barriers to the implementation of subscription models in the manufacturing sector are still present. Despite this, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of this offer, allowing companies to stay in touch with their customers, and to maintain, or even increase, the revenue streams.