Value Co-Creation: A Literature Review

Abstract

The theory of value co-creation is getting more and more attention. Scholars have begun to re-examine business philosophy and value creation methods, and found that customers are no longer just users of products. They have become not only an important innovation force for enterprises, but also a source of corporate competitive advantage. This paper first combs the mainstream definition of value co creation, and finds that there are three research perspectives, including service science perspective, consumer culture perspective and innovation perspective. Based on a systematic review method, this paper uses citespace software to sort out the research literature on value co-creation, determine the main research stay of value co-creation, and uses visual charts to show the relationship between various types of representative literature. Co-citation technology is used to select the representative literature and categorize it, the main clustering literature is 14 knowledge groups, including service-led logic, customer participation, co-creation concepts, customer experience, process research, business network, social marketing, operation model, sharing economy, viewer experience, ecosystem, etc. This study finds that in the advancement of value co-creation research, it can be roughly classified into three types of research topics. First, the research theme of why customers participate in co-creation mainly involves the psychological motivation and personal characteristics of customers’ participation in value co-creation and related research. Second, how to carry out value co-creation is a relatively concentrated topic in the research of value co-creation. The research content can be further divided into role research in value co-creation, process research in value co-creation, and management problem research. Finally, in the impact results of value co-creation, more studies have shown that value co-creation has effect on new products. Performance, loyalty and other aspects will have a positive impact. This article provides a variety of options for subsequent value co-creation research.