Cutting costs and looking good: Why customers buy security services

Outsourced security services are an essential part of business and risk-management strategy in almost every contemporary company. Increased need for security services in private companies has created huge market potential and new business prospects for security companies. It is estimated that the security sector will continue to grow globally by around eight per cent per year [1], being one of the most rapidly growing industries in, for example, Europe [2]. In this paper, we use 'private security industry' to refer to privately funded business entities and organisations supplying security related products and services for a fee [3]. The security industry's customer base is very wide, and it cuts across all sectors of the market, to include government entities and commercial and industrial enterprises [4] as well as individual citizens and private households. Previous research has revealed that security companies' product offerings consist increasingly of various services, and they advertise themselves as real service companies [5]. What is contradictory, however, is that when we took a closer look at the security business from the central perspectives of service research, such as servitisation, service-orientation, or marketing communication, we discovered that the security companies do not actually follow service-oriented business logic [5]. Too often, transactional and goods-based business practices take precedence over the more relational and customer-oriented approach. We argue that the security business could benefit from a move toward more service-oriented business logic, and that a more profound understanding of customer perceived value and value drivers is needed in security services. The purpose of this paper is to discuss why customers purchase security services and, after this, what the prerequisites are for value creation. Two models are introduced in the paper: a model of the fundamental motives for the use of security services and a ValueSSe Value Map.