Value co-creation and co-destruction in self-service technology: A customer’s perspective

Abstract

Abstract Self-service technology (SST) benefits e-commerce firms by increasing operational efficiency and reducing labor costs, while it also challenges firms in that service resources could be misused and service failure could be difficult to recover. Prior studies investigate either the bright (value co-creation) or the dark (value co-destruction) side of SST in “isolation,” while this study examines SST with both perspectives in one integrated model. Using emerging Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as a framework, and augmenting it with attribution theory from the psychology area, we better depict the nature of value-co-creation and value co-destruction that emerge in the SST usage process from a customer’s perspective. Specifically, we consider six different SST use contexts, composed of three types of resource misuse and two kinds of SST service failure, to illuminate in what contexts, SST customers choose to co-create or co-destruct value with SST firms. Using a survey with 413 respondents and a mixed-methods approach (quantitative and qualitative), our results show that customers are more likely to continuously co-create value with firms when they think resources are misused by themselves, when experiencing process failure, and when using an in-process co-creation strategy. In contrast, customers tend to continuously co-destruct value when they think resources are misused by firms, when experiencing an outcome-failure context, and when using an in-process co-destruction strategy. Our proposed framework enables e-commerce firms to immediately trigger essential service recovery whenever service co-destruction occurs. We also discuss how firms can utilize the latest technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), behavioral big data, and Chatbot to promptly co-create values, hence contributing to future SST and e-commerce design.