Apart from macroeconomic and global factors, microeconomic conditions play an important part within these deep structural changes, compelling us to review various theoretical and practical issues related to enterprise competitiveness and enterprise development strategies.
New types of services have a key meaning in the knowledge-based economy. The new services are characterized by a new form of delivery to the recipient as well as by different ways of service management. What is also new here is the degree of intangibility. These services are heterogenic in nature. Literature in this field lists many different, ofter conflicting or controversial methods of classification.
As has been mentioned before, a clear and fiiting classification of these services is important not only with regard to the possible success of our research studies. Its practical implications cannot be overestimated either. Various types of services require different forms of management in the enterprise.
What appears to be an over concise division, in fact compels us to review the characteristics of the economic category of services. This refers to such questions as to whether a given service indeed requires production and consumption simultaneously.
Another advantage of this division of services is the clear emphasis on the interactive aspect of services. The consumer (customer) is at the centre of that interaction and becomes an integral part of services activity management. The role of consumer needs and expectations is thus gaining in importance.
However, a different, important issue can be raised here: what is the actual starting point for enterprise quality management in the global service economy – the product or the consumer? What are the actual relations between production and sale? What is the approach to consumption in contemporary economic theory? What are the actual relations between economics and management in this area, i.e. between the goals and the resources?
Is the consumer the most important element of contemporary enterprise management, with the enterprise seeking to be increasingly competitive? Is it not about doing everything just to boost sales ans enhance the enterprise value, using different sophisticated marketing techniques? Should we not, then, in many situations firstly see marketing as an increasingly efficient tool of manipulation of existing and potencial customers – an instrument which is highly undesirable from the perspective of the interests of the enterprise’s stakeholders (other than its shareholders)?
In the context of such rapid changes in the global environment we should compare the extent to which Polish enterprises are adapting to the global trends in the digital economy. What matters at this point is the speed and quality of the infrastructure created for information products manufactured in the future.
