Product and complementary service: looking for the right pair

In 2003, the French government advised manufacturing enterprises to associate service to the product they manufacture in order to keep competitive. A problem for these enterprises concerns the identification of the "feasible" service, i.e. the service that will allow a firm to be on the top in comparison to its concurrents, close to its customers and profitable. This paper aims to propose a way to determine this feasible service. The proposition is based on two assumptions: the first one concerns the fact that manufacturing firms are organized according to a specific model that correspond to the enterprise culture and that it will not be totally questioned. The second assumption concerns the fact that it is possible to differentiate products according to their technological complexity and their customer relationship