Redefining value co-creation

As discussed in the theory chapters, value co-creation has gained an increasing amount of attention within the last years. Despite the fact that the discussion has been extensive (and not limited within the domains of marketing or business economics and administration) its applicability in marketing has remained at a rather abstract level of analysis. This has resulted in a fuzzy set of definitions and interpretations.

As a result of exploring the current literature on value co-creation, it was concluded that to clarify our understanding as well as to further the development of the concept, focus should be on building an outlined perspective to the ‘value’, the

‘co’, and the ‘creation’ in value co-creation (see Table 7). With respect to these sub elements, it was recognized that emphasis should be on understandingwhat kind of value for whom, by what kind of resources, and through what kind of a mechanism does value co-creation eventually result in. Value co-creation was thus not perceived as something that is always taking place, i.e. as a perspective or lens through which a phenomenon is viewed. Similarly with Grönroos (2011, 292), approaching value as always co-created lacks clear theoretical and practical

implications: “it has no explaining power.” On the contrary, conceptually, it was considered critically important that the concept strives to incorporate and capture something new in a contemporary marketing-related phenomenon; it helps to understand the empirical world better. Through dismantling the value co-creation concept into its constituent parts a more outlined perspective can be gained towards understanding what value co-creation eventually is about in a given context;

moreover, it helps to understand the consequences of redefining exchange. Table 23 uses this approach to summarize value co-creation resulting from reverse use of customer data in the research context.

Table 23. Value co-creation resulting from reverse use of customer data through its sub elements allows customers to create such value that would not otherwise emerge. Information as an additional resource to the customer’s value creation results in value that can be hedonic and utilitarian in nature, and is used creation process with additional resources; thus, the concept of value co-creation goes beyond the traditional exchange constisting of goods (as input to the customer’s value creation) and money (as input to the firm’s value creation).

In more detail, it was the firm who engaged in the co-creation of customer value through supporting customers’ creation of value-in-use by providing additional

resources. This, however, should also be beneficial to the firm. As is argued by Grönroos and Ravald (2011, 13), “as marketing and the whole business process also aims at benefiting the supplier, it is of course not only the customers who should gain value from business interactions with suppliers and service providers”.

Therefore, it was also important to understand the firm perspective to customer value co-creation; i.e. why firms establish an interaction in the case study context.

Altogether, value co-creation is understood as resulting from changed customer/firm roles in the process of providing resources into each others value-creating processes.

This change in customer/firm roles, i.e. change in the traditional exchange, has to be beneficial for both (or all) actors involved and resulting in such value that would not otherwise exist. As a result of the readjusted customer/firm roles, such customer value was created that was also considered to enable the firm to gain financial value in return (see Grönroos, 2011; Grönroos and Helle, 2011).

The readjusted perspective to value co-creation has similarities with the concept of mutual value creation. Grönroos and Helle (2010) argue that mutual value creation should be understood as an interactive process of creating and sharing joint productivity gains. Similarly with the perspective to value co-creation employed herein, these productivity gains result from adjustments to each other’s processes by both parties in order to enhance the value creation process of both parties. Focus is expanded “from value as an assessment to value creation itself” (Grönroos & Helle, 2010, 575). In this research, both the customer’s and the firm’s value creation was adjusted as a result of the change in the resource integration process. Instead of only selling goods, the firm provided customers also with information about the healthfulness of their groceries. Thus, this shift from selling to supporting can also be understood as the readjustment of value-creating processes Grönroos and Helle (2010) refer to.

Reverse use of customer data is only one mechanism for adjusting customer/firm roles and evoking change in the resource integration process. Other mechanisms, such as co-development, crowdsourcing or co-design, could also deliver benefits resulting from readjusted resource integration (for the list of such mechanisms, see e.g. Frow, Payne, & Storbacka, 2010; see also Sheth & Uslay, 2007), and thus, challenge traditional perspective to exchange within a specific business context.

However, in those examples, the focus is on the firm value co-creation; i.e. it is the customer who provides the firm with additional resources. Mechanisms such as

co-production or co-design are about customers serving firms; customers provide firms with additional resources than money alone. In that respect, these mechanisms are forms of a somewhat inversed service where the main beneficiary is not the customer, but the firm (compare with service definitions by Vargo and Lusch (2004, 2) and Grönroos (2008a, 300)). They are similar vehicles for altering the traditional customer/firm roles in resource integration and can result in different kinds of parallel exchanges where additional resources (as input to the firm’s value creation) are exchanged for additional resources (as input to the customer’s value creation).

Thus, what distinguishes reverse use of customer data from the more widely acknowledged value co-creation mechanisms is its orientation toward supporting customers’ value creation; i.e. serving customers, not the firm.

In the general framework, redefining value co-creation is located at the intersection of the firm perspective (supporting firm’s value creation) and customer perspective (supporting customer’s value creation) as it involves both actors.