How to successfully position new consulting services with clients: Insights from the theory of planned behavior

Abstract

Consulting providers, which want to launch new products and services on the market, differing from the service spectrum they have provided so far, are confronted with two groups of problems. On the one hand, there are difficulties during the product development phase, because of insufficient own resources and competences. On the other hand, there are problems to win clients for these new products. Both aspects will be discussed in the following contribution. The focus though will be on the client-related problem. To explain this problem, established social psychological models will be used. This aims at a deeper understanding of the correlations and also gives practical design guidelines. We use an IT consulting company as an example. This company wants to market supplementary services in the fields of management consulting in the future.