Digital transformation has become a mega trend topic for many enterprises globally. For some companies, customer interactions have been digitalized. But many companies still rely on physical interactions of customers with their products in the core value creation processes. Thus the key challenges for digital transformation efforts would be associating product-centered value propositions with digitalized services. In other words, the transformation of product-centered values into experience values co-created by customers with services supporting customers. The research goal of this paper is to identify different strategies for digital transformation in product-service systems (PSS) design so that diverse paths for digital transformation can be considered in designing PSSs. Three types for digital transformation strategies have been identified from PSS design cases conducted in a manufacturing servitization support framework project where PSSs have been designed for 15 manufacturing companies including SMEs and large companies with varying levels of digital technology. A classification for digital transformation strategies could be postulated with three primary dimensions and two supplementary dimensions.

Department stores are often seen as transformative of both retail and wider social practices. This article offers a comparative analysis of department stores in early twentieth-century Britain and Japan to assess the extent to which there were universal qualities defining the operation, practices, and experience of department stores and to explore the ways in which they might be seen as transforming retailing in the two countries. Despite similarities in their origin, organization, and service to customers, we highlight the greater diversity of British department stores and their incremental development. Japanese stores were a far more powerful force for change because they formed part of a concerted and conscious program of modernization.