New service development in India's business‐to‐business financial services sector

PurposeFew research studies have been done to investigate the issue of new service development (NSD) in an emerging market. To address this gap in the literature the aim of this paper is to document a study of the NSD process and the strategy of business‐to‐business financial service firms in India.Design/methodology/approachThe author conducted surveys of 148 multinational service firms operating in India and 126 local and indigenous Indian service firms belonging to the financial services industry.FindingsThe findings suggest that significant differences exist between multinational service firms operating in India and local/indigenous Indian firms. That is, service firms belonging to these two varied groups use different strategies to compete in the industry and emphasize different sets of development stages in service innovation.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis has been restricted to one emerging market, i.e. India. This suggests the need for further studies of NSD in other emerging markets of the world.Practical implicationsThe findings of this research validate the initial contention that NSD practices vary from company to company, and thus there cannot be a “one size fits all” approach to service innovation. The insights from this study can help service managers to better understand and manage their NSD programs in an emerging market such as India.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, this research represents the first attempt to investigate empirically the NSD practices of financial service firms in India.