Consumer social resources to co-create: evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to validate an integrative model that investigates the structural relationships among consumer social resources (including social capital and social exchange), co-creation behaviors (as outcome of social resources) and satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth (as joint outcomes of social resources and co-creation practice).Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional design was used to gather data from education services in HCM City, Vietnam. The whole of 334 consumer surveys were used to validate a research model using SEM/AMOS.FindingsThe paper, on the basis of service-dominant logic and from customer perspective, asserts the importance of consumer co-creation in service logic. The finding reinforces that social capital and social exchange, as interconnected operant resources, influence consumer co-creation that further affects consumer satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth. In addition, no gender gap of co-creation practice is found in education services of the study. Moreover, this study, with the support of structuration theory, posits that value is co-created and socially contextual through resource integration and service exchange.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first, with empirically validating the social capital-co-creation link, to reveal that social capital, as a second-order construct, is an important determinant of co-creation practice. Next, this is also one of the first studies from a consumer view, with social exchange leading social capital as empirically demonstrated, that evidently investigates both the mechanism of value co-creation and the interconnection of social resources in service systems. Last but not least, this study may be also one of the first steps toward investigating the socially contextual nature of co-creation which may assert the last updated axiom of service-dominant logic.