Market penetration of digital products and services : case company: KONE Corporation

Abstract

The proliferation of digital products and services is transforming today’s business environment. To stay competitive requires new strategies, research, and know-how. The thesis aims to contribute to the prevailing works in digitalization. Specifically, the author intends to explore the determinants that predict the market penetration of the case company’s digital products and/or services and develop it as a baseline for the case company’s market penetration strategies.

The thesis explores organizational theories such as the technology acceptance model (TAM) and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to understand how and why digital products and services spread through society. Digital trust was found to be a suitable measure to represent these theories and as a key driver for digital adoption. Furthermore, the thesis reinforces previous studies on how digitalization levels in each country impact the ease of doing digital business. The thesis also builds knowledge from previous studies on how national culture has an impact on country level of firms’ digitalization. The thesis is conducted with a deductive approach and a quantitative design using a mix of primary and secondary data.

The key findings from the regression analysis indicate that digitalization levels, digital trust, and long-term orientation from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions have an impact on the case company’s market penetration of digital products and/or services. The results were then used to provide managerial implications that outline the top countries that the case company should focus their investments on in digitalization and how they could tap into these markets strategically.