EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF VALUE CREATION CRITERIA: ACHIEVING CONSENSUS USING DELPHI EXERCISE WITHIN SERVICE INDUSTRY

Businesses are realising the strategic significance of customer participation in value creation in an increasingly competitive market environment. However, there is still little empirical study on the precise contributions made by customer experts to value creation, despite the increased interest in customer interaction. This paper aims to provide recommendations on the value creation criteria covering financial and non-financial dimensions, based on the consensus reached from the Delphi Exercise involving customer experts who possess in-depth knowledge of services. Delphi exercise is a systematic procedure to elicit expert opinion where the intended outcome is to attain a decisive consensus within the appointed panel of experts. Nine panel members of experts were involved in the Delphi exercise until a consensus or agreement was reached in the third round. Findings indicate that there are several new items agreed upon by the panel members for both financial and non-financial dimensions. The findings, add to the expanding corpus of research on consumer involvement in value creation and companies' opportunities to improve their interactions with customer experts. This also contributes to SDG 8(Economic Growth and Decent Work) in boosting productivity, innovation and employment in the service industry.