FROM DIGITALIZATION TO SERVITIZATION: UNRAVELING MECHANISMS AND PATHWAYS IN MANUFACTURING FIRM TRANSFORMATION

Manufacturing enterprises are the cornerstone of China’s national economy, and servitization has emerged as a vital pathway for their transformation, upgrading, and high-quality development. In the context of building a manufacturing powerhouse, leveraging digital technologies to enable servitization transformation has become a key strategic focus. This study adopts a bibliometric approach and utilizes CiteSpace to conduct a visual analysis of both domestic and international literature on digitally enabled servitization transformation in manufacturing enterprises. The objective is to clarify the research scope, trace the evolutionary trajectory, and identify regional distributions within the field. Digital empowerment is identified as a current research hotspot. Through keyword co-occurrence and cluster analyses, the study investigates three core research questions: What is digital servitization? Why does digital empowerment matter for servitization transformation? How does it facilitate upgrading? The findings reveal three primary research themes—theoretical foundations, effectiveness, and pathways of digitally enabled servitization—offering a structured overview of the field’s development and contributing to a deeper understanding of its underlying mechanisms. These insights provide valuable guidance for future research and strategic decision-making in manufacturing servitization.