Value co-creation among retailers and consumers: New insights into the furniture market

This paper aims to examine the applicability of a value co-creation framework that integrates the process view (customer, supplier and encounter value-creating processes), the actors’ view (the value facilitator and the value co-creator) and the role of customer knowledge in furniture retail stores using service-dominant (S-D) logic.We conducted multiple case studies to analyse retailers’ points of view and in-depth interviews to explore customers’ perspectives. Our research findings suggest that the proposed model can be effectively used to analyse value co-creation management in furniture firms, allowing researchers to identify the actions of retailers and customers and evaluate their matching. Even more importantly, this framework helps to foster value co-creation to increase the benefits for each participant during each stage of the relationship.     

Value co-creation among hotels and disabled customers: An exploratory study

This study examines how service supplier and buyer value co-creation influences buyers' attitudes toward service providers. Service-dominant logic is a prevalent concept in the services industry, providing an important marketing theory in which intangible resources, co-creation of value, and relationships are the keys to determining marketing exchanges. This research describes a model for analyzing value co-creation management in the hotel industry, focusing on the specific market segment of disabled customers. This framework helps foster value co-creation to increase the benefits for participants during each stage of their relationship. The paper also presents the managerial implications of the research findings.     

Effect of customer involvement on co-creation of services: A moderated mediation model

The study explored the influence of customer involvement on co-creation directly and indirectly through three customer engagement dimensions, namely identification, interaction, and absorption from lens of customer-dominant logic and stimulus-organism-response framework. Data were collected from 211 Chinese service customers in Hong Kong. Results of IBM SPSS PROCESS models showed that customer involvement influenced co-creation directly and indirectly through absorption and interaction, but not identification. Customer involvement was found to exert a greater impact on co-creation of services for those with a high rather than low relation orientation. Thus, service providers should utilize mass media effectively to arouse customers’ feelings of relevance and important of services to them. They should also interact with customers continuously through social media that can be enhanced by various kinds of immersion technology.     

More gain,more give? The impact of brand community value on users’ value co-creation

Users' value co-creation behaviors contribute to the prosperity of brand communities as well as brand performance. This article aims to answer a basic question: are brand community users who obtain more value from the brand community more willing to co-create value? If so, why and under what conditions? Drawing from reciprocity theory, this study proposes that information value and social value lead to value co-creation by evoking users' reciprocity norm, and this effect depends on their self-presentation in the community. Results based on structural equation modeling combining survey data and archival data largely validate this framework, revealing that the reciprocity norm mediates the influence of brand community value on value co-creation. Additionally, information value increases value co-creation only when the level of self-presentation is high, and the positive effect of social value is not altered by self-presentation. By uncovering the mechanism and boundary conditions of how brand community value affects users’ value co-creation behaviors, this study extends the current literature on value co-creation and provides important practical implications.     

Value co-creation via information and communications technology

The aims of the present work centre on determining whether co-created value constitutes a competitive advantage for firms, and whether it is capable of influencing consumer behaviour. Applying the service-dominant logic perspective, the work examines the firm's capabilities in the context of its business-to-customer (B2C) interactions, focusing on information and communications technology (ICT) as a particular driver of value co-creation. Taking this B2C perspective, ICT is measured, from the firm's point of view, and customer perceptions are analysed, using the variables ‘value co-creation’, ‘perceived value’ and ‘loyalty’. The sample consists of 100 service firms and 572 of their customers. The findings indicate that ICT capabilities have a direct effect on value co-creation, as does value co-creation on perceived value and loyalty.     

共享服务系统体验价值共创行为的影响因素

由于共享经济的发展和信息技术的进步,共享服务系统中的共创行为变得越来越容易实现,消费者与企业协作共创价值成为新的发展趋势。在消费者需求和共享行为都不断变化的情况下,如果共享服务供应商不清楚何种因素能够加速消费者价值共创行为的生成,则会影响共创价值实现。基于服务主导逻辑的理论,构建共享服务系统体验价值共创行为及其影响因素的理论模型。依据收集的450份有效问卷,对数据进行分析后发现,共享服务系统中感知利益、感知信任和社会可持续性通过互动协作(价值共创过程)对顾客体验价值产生影响,顾客体验价值对顾客的价值共创行为意向产生影响。研究结果表明,顾客参与共创动机中的效益动机和信任动机显著正向影响互动协作,互动协作显著正向影响体验价值和共创行为意向,而体验价值在互动协作和共创行为意向之间起到显著部分中介作用。共享服务提供方和产品制造方应多从顾客视角考虑其效益需求和信任需求,定位顾客需求和偏好,提供更有吸引力和说服力的商品与服务,使顾客感知到更多的收益,并形成较高信任度;提升与顾客的互动水平,建立顾客对服务方的好感,激发顾客更多的主动交互行为、参与行为和个人创新行为;重视资源的整合、分配和调动,实行以顾客驱动为核心的开放创新模式;招募优质用户,通过倾听和观察了解其价值主张,促进价值共创行为的生成,改善共享服务系统的整体服务质量。     

Transformative value co-creation with older customers in e-services: Exploring the influence of customer participation on appreciation of digital affordances and well-being

This study challenges the negative assumption that older customers struggle to adapt to e-service by exploring the positive influence of their participation on transformative value co-creation. A two-phase mixed-methods approach was adopted to develop and validate the research model. The results found that customer participation, including information sharing, responsible behaviors, and in-role feedback, promotes older customers' digital skills and basic needs satisfaction, leading to higher appreciation of digital affordances and well-being. Additionally, online employees’ customer orientation positively moderates the above relationships. This study provides insight for service providers to include older customers in e-services.     

Does Raising Value Co-creation Increase All Customers’ Happiness?

Happiness, defined as a state of well-being and contentment, is a central human goal. Despite advances in customer behavior research related to value co-creation, the link between customer happiness and these behaviors remains unclear. This study therefore examines customers’ in-role participation behavior and extra-role citizenship behavior to determine their influence on customers’ happiness. Customer participation and citizenship behaviors relate positively to customers’ perceptions of both service performance and their contributions to others’ welfare. In addition, collectivism moderates the relationship between perceived contributions to others’ welfare and happiness; individualism instead moderates the relationship between perceived service performance and happiness. These findings provide both managerial implications and directions for business marketing ethics.     

Extending customer relationship management into a social context

Informed by the resource-based view, this study draws on customer relationship management (CRM) and value co-creation literature to develop a framework examining the impact of social networking sites on processes to manage customer relationships. Facilitating the depth and networked interactions necessary to truly engage customers, social networking sites act as a means of enhancing customer relationships through the co-creation of value, moving CRM into a social context. Tested and validated on a data set of hotels, the main contribution of the study to service research lies in the extension of CRM processes, termed relational information processes, to include value co-creation processes due to the social capabilities afforded by social networking sites. Information technology competency and social media orientation act as critical antecedents to these processes, which have a positive impact on both financial and non-financial aspects of firm performance. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed accordingly.     

The expected retail customer: Value co-creator,co-producer or disturbance?

The purpose of this paper is to explore expectations among front-line employees regarding their customers and how these expectations can be understood in relation to strategies of customer participation and value co-creation. Two categories of expectations are identified; operative and interactive. In particular, the operative expectations reveal a service practice that is heavily structured by large-scale systems and ideals of rational efficiency. It is argued that co-creation needs to be discussed on both the strategic level, i.e. in terms of what the “customer”/market wants, and on the operative level, where the customer's direct contribution to the value-creating process has its focus.     

Two-sided effects of customer participation: roles of relationships and social-interaction values in social services

This research aims to extend customer participation and value co-creation theory to the social-services sector, where consumer choice is restricted. This study examines the relationship between the value creation of participation and customer satisfaction in social services. The perceived value corresponding to different types of relationships was divided into company–customer (relationship value) and customer–customer (social-interaction value). To test hypotheses, data were collected via an online survey of customers using child-care centers in Korea. The participating customers had children who attended day-care centers, and the proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Empirical result shows that customer participation as information resource and customer participation as co-developer affect the relationship and social-interaction values. The most important and interesting result is that the relationship value has a positive effect, but the social-interaction value has a negative one on customer satisfaction. These results suggest that customer participation in social services has both positive and negative outcomes, which means that the social-interaction value of co-creation does not always lead to customer satisfaction in a choice-limited service such as child care. This study explains a counterintuitive and interesting relationship between the social-interaction value and customer satisfaction by validating the moderating role of social network service-based interaction intensity in child-care services.     

Customers’ everyday understanding of ‘value’ from a second-order cybernetic perspective

ABSTRACT

Value is in the centre of service and marketing. However, what does value mean to customers? The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of value from a customers’ perspective using a second-order cybernetics approach. We found that the word ‘value’ is recursively linked to 13 different ‘meanings’ indicating a variety of understandings of the term ‘value’. Furthermore, the findings support service-dominant logic where customers integrate their own resources (skills and knowledge) in the value co-creation process. Future research has to be aware of the different meanings, which are associated with value. Marketing managers need to understand, on the one hand, that value has a different meaning to their customer and on the other hand, what value means to their specific target groups.     

Co-creation and service recovery process communication: effects on satisfaction,repurchase intentions,and word of mouth

After service failure situations, firms often carry out transactional activities to achieve customer recovery (CR), using corrective actions to restore the exchange (e.g., economic and social compensations). Furthermore, during the service recovery process, firms can encourage activities of co-creation (CC) to prevent similar future failures. This paper discusses the importance of CC and service recovery process communication (RPC), in which customers are informed of the adoption of solutions to address the cause of the failure, so as to avoid the same problem happening again. Experimental studies investigate the impact, individually and together, of CR, CC, and RPC on satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word of mouth. The results indicate that CC and RPC improve customer’s satisfaction, repurchase intentions, and word of mouth. Firms that want to maximize the return on their efforts to prevent service failures, should encourage CC, develop solutions to prevent future failure recurrence, and implement strategies of RPC. Firms must decide how to promote CC and which media to use for RPC.     

Rethinking value co-creation and loyalty in virtual travel communities: How and when they develop

For marketers of virtual travel communities (VTCs), a vital issue is to understand how to maintain consumer stickiness and loyalty. Although existing studies have tried to explore this issue, researchers have not given detailed and specific answers from the value co-creation theoretic lens. Therefore, the present paper aims to bridge this research gap by investigating the relationship among consumer trust in VTCs, consumer co-creation behaviors and their loyalty. The moderating impact of community service quality (CSQ) on loyalty is also explored. Data from a two-wave survey were collected from 214 active users in a Chinese VTC (Mafengwo) and then analyzed using the ordinary least squares (OLS) technique with STATA 13. Results indicated that (1) consumer trust positively impacts on two dimensions of value co-creation behavior, namely, breadth participation and depth participation. (2) Depth participation is more conducive to cultivating both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, while breadth participation has an inverted U-shaped influence on behavioral loyalty. (3) CSQ positively moderates the relationship between depth participation and attitudinal loyalty. But after controlling for the effect of attitudinal loyalty on behavioral loyalty, this study found that CSQ negatively moderates the relationship between depth participation and behavioral loyalty. This paper developed a comprehensive framework involving antecedent and consequence of consumer co-creation behavior and showed the importance of CSQ as a key boundary condition, enriching the existing VTC and consumer loyalty research from the perspective of value co-creation and trust theory. Corresponding practical implications and limitations are also discussed.     

物流服务供应链的研究——从供应到需求的视角转变

服务业的快速发展让研究学者开始重新认识服务,对服务概念的不同理解形成了不同的服务逻辑观。文章从结构、管理要素、价值创造、利益协调四个方面分析了传统物流服务供应链的理论架构,运用服务主导逻辑分析物流服务供应链,提出应当将物流服务供应链的研究视角从保障能力供应向满足客户需求转变,重视客户在物流服务供应链中的地位与作用。在此基础上,文章分析了需求视角下物流服务供应链中企业客户与服务提供商共同创造服务价值的价值创造机理与利益共享形成机制等问题,提出三个进一步研究的方向。     

Customer complaint behaviour (CCB) in the retail sector: why do customers voice their complaints on Facebook?

With the increasing usage of platforms such as Facebook, understanding customer complaint behaviour (CCB) in the context of the social media is imperative for any businesses. Of the two billion users on Facebook, more than half of its users have shared their product-related experiences with others on the platform. This paper aims to explore CCB in the context of social media in regards to customers’ unfavourable buying experiences in the retail sector. A qualitative research approach and 12 in-depth interviews were conducted. The findings indicate that the respondents’ initial contact with the retailer directly resulted in service recovery failures and undesirable outcomes. Such double deviation then leads to frustration and uncertainty of the situation, which furthermore led to the respondents’ need to voice their complaint by sharing their unfavourable experiences on Facebook. The main reasons for the respondents to voice their complaints on the platform is to vent frustration, to share their unfavourable experiences, a need to be seen, understood and respected, to seek revenge by damaging the retailer’s reputation as well as offering the retailer a chance to improve. A proper way to manage complaints, in which frontline employees can solve the problem before the customers feel the need to turn to the social media, is crucial. However, once the complaints are voiced on Facebook, it is imperative to respond to the complaints and acknowledge the problem rather than ignoring the situation.     

The rise of smart consumers: role of smart servicescape and smart consumer experience co-creation

ABSTRACT

Rapid technological advancements have led to the emergence of smart services and smart consumers. This study focuses on smart consumers who voluntarily engage in value creation activities, in order to conceptualise smart experience co-creation (SEC) and the smart servicescape. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, a model is proposed and tested around the impacts of smart servicescape dimensions (aesthetics, superior functionality, social presence, perceived interactivity and perceived personalisation) on smart consumer experience co-creation. SEC is conceptualised as a second-order construct consisting of cognitive, hedonic, social/personal, and pragmatic/economic first-order dimensions. Results show that the technological environmental cues of the smart servicescape (S) collectively influence smart experience co-creation (O), and this co-created experience eventually influences consumers’ service brand equity and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions (R). A major novelty of this study lies in uncovering the relationship between experience co-creation and service brand equity. Findings have theoretical and managerial implications for smart services.     

Engaging Customers through Social Media to Improve Industrial Product Development: The Role of Customer Co-Creation Value

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media on customer loyalty with the mediation of customer co-creation value and to build a customer engagement model through co-creation value, which is supported by product improvement perceived in increasing customer loyalty. The data collection employed a survey method with structured questionnaires which were distributed to 150 respondents who were the members of social media product communities in Indonesia. The findings showed that interactions through social media are able to increase customer engagement, facilitaitng collaboration in co-creation value, allowing the company to improve and develop products based on customers' needs and desires, which will eventually increase customer loyalty.     

服务化理论最新研究进展

服务化是制造业升级的重要途径,企业采用服务化战略实现由制造向服务转变,可以获得新的竞争优势。文章通过梳理国内外服务化理论的经典文献,阐述服务化的定义、目标与研究内容,归纳理论构成的主要维度：影响因素、发展策略和管理模式,并详细介绍了各维度的主要观点和演化过程。最后,基于对现有研究成果的总结和评述,运用系统思维和价值共创等概念,构建了服务化理论框架,并探索未来的理论发展方向。     

Intentionality and transformative services: Wellbeing co-creation and spill-over effects

In recent years, the service discipline has seen the emergence of a number of novel conceptual approaches, one in particular, called Transformative Service Research (TSR) focuses on wellbeing improvement and relieving suffering through service. However, service related wellbeing efforts can have both intended but also unintended consequences when aiming at co-creating value with individuals, communities or society at large. Nevertheless, academic debate lacks clarity regarding the effects of the directedness of service exchange and the outcome of transformative service in regard to, but also beyond, the focal actors involved. Directedness of service co-creation is closely related to the construct of intentionality. This conceptual paper aims to untangle this pivotal construct to comprehend actors’ intended co-creative wellbeing efforts to alleviate suffering of other actors, and it pays attention to potential unintended side effects. The paper synthesizes literature from philosophy and psychology relating to the construct of intentionality and applies it to wellbeing co-creation and co-destruction. Illustrative scenarios are used to support the lines of argument. The paper demonstrates how applying the literature on intentionality to transformative service contexts can assist in bringing greater transparency to the discussion of the directedness of service related wellbeing efforts and potential spill-over effects. When designing transformative services to improve wellbeing, service providers are urged to develop an awareness regarding their services and potential side effects. Likewise, policymakers responsible for devising, revising and (re-)implementing healthcare and social policies should consider such potential spill-over effects when formulating public policy guidelines. Equally, service scholars should integrate the construct of intentionality in any discussion of service-to-service exchange. This paper is amongst the first to draw on the concept of intentionality and introduces it to service research in the context of wellbeing co-creation.