Actors, roles, and interactions in value co-creation

Advancements in technology facilitated the rise of online platforms and social media channels like YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram, enabling new modes of interaction and a potential for new topologies for creating value. The increasing demand of consumers creates many opportunities for incumbent and new actors to enter the market. Such connectivity on a global level also yields opportunities to jointly create value with customers, organizations, broadcasters, and other actors. The service-dominant logic describes such constellations as service ecosystems where the value is co-created through the interaction of multiple actors. However, the specific roles, relationships, and how co-creation activities remain to be determined given context-specific peculiarities for different industries. In this dissertation different research methods to create a more encompassing comprehension of value co-creation processes. First, qualitative case studies examined processes for resource integration, shared values, and beliefs between actors to identify their respective roles in co-creation. Second, quantitative analyses were adopted to conceptualize the value co-creation and service value constructs using structural equation modeling. By validating both constructs, co-creation and service value, this dissertation showed its positive impact on exogenous variables like satisfaction, loyalty, and financial rewards, enabling managers to include actors’ resources and shared values for joint value creation. The studies conducted indicate that the service-dominant logic is suitable as a foundation for studying value (co-)creation. Due to the changing nature of academic and business practices, the research papers follow the urgency for an extended definition of value and value co-creation. As service ecosystems continue to change and advance, this dissertation reviewed and improved the comprehension of what defines service value and value co-creation in this research field. The findings provide valuable insights for managers emphasizing the importance of actor relationships, open designs, and unique value propositions to tailor value co-creation and service experience accordingly. The dissertation also offers theoretical implications for unifying different approaches to conceptualizing value co-creation and service value. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on the value (co-)creation process by new empirical findings as well as contributing to theory development. Managers can learn from the insights that shared beliefs and mutual involvement in the co-creation process supports VCC outcomes like customer satisfaction, loyalty, recommendation intention, and monetary aspects like willingness to pay. The conceptualizations of service value and VCC support managers to relocate their resources and leverage the motivation and owned resource of actors in VCC processes.