Unveiling managerial perceptions of the customer’s lived experience in digital B2B service innovations : An ethnographic case study

The digital revolution has transformed business environments, resulting in the need for companies to constantly innovate and adapt their service in a digital context to remain competitive. However, while digital service innovations have become important, little is known about how customers experience these innovations, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) sector. This study aims to explore the alignment and misalignment between managers’ perceptions and customers’ perceptions of the customers’ lived experience with digital B2B service innovations. Using an ethnographic method, this study conducts a multi-case study that involves B2B firms to investigate these perspectives. Interviewing and observing both managers and customers within these B2B firms, as well as applying the Gioia method to find patterns within the data, a framework was developed that highlights the alignments and misalignments between the managers’ perspectives and customers’ perspectives. Furthermore, this study proposes implementations for managers to enhance alignment between customers’ perspectives and managers’ perspectives on digital B2B service innovations in the future.