Assessing the Extent to which Customer Feedback Contributes to Value Co-Creation: A Focus on the Tourism Industry

Over the past few decades, the process of creating economic value haschanged from single companies contributing individually to co-creating valueand integrating customer knowledge into product development. Firms arecreating value through the use of engagement experiences between customersand firms. The new locus of value co-creation is interactions between firmstakeholders and customers; hence, organisations need to be designed torevolve around these interactions to identify opportunities for customercompany co-creation. Nonetheless, there are still a lot of unansweredquestions regarding value co-creation, its antecedents, and its effects.Literature on the effects of customer feedback on value co-creation is sparse,the existing body of knowledge lacks information regarding the role playedby customer feedback to enhance the co-creation of value between firms andtheir consumers. In context with this, the study aims to assess the extent towhich customer feedback contributes to value co-creation by focusing on thetourism industry. In addressing the aforementioned gap, this study employedthe Service – dominant (S–D) Logic Theory. Moreover, purposive samplingwas used in this study to gather qualitative data from 20 guests who madevisits to the 23 targeted game and nature reserves in Mpumalanga. Thefindings revealed that customer feedback such as preferences and opinionsabout products and services enhances value co-creation. Moreover, thefindings revealed that the use of social media platforms to allow consumers tomake suggestions and comments about a service provision enhances value cocreation. This study therefore concludes that firms must encourage customerfeedback to enhance value co-creation.