Opportunities For Co-creation Research Articles

Learning with the market

PurposeAlthough the generation of social value is the focus of social entrepreneurship, little research attention is paid on how social value and transformation can be created. By adopting a market approach, this study aims to develop a framework showing how social enterprises in tourism/hospitality can generate social value and transformation.Design/methodology/approachA thorough literature review revealed that a market approach is an appropriate lens for understanding social entrepreneurship. Consequently, a framework based on “learning with the market” is proposed as a useful tool for identifying, managing and also creating (new) opportunities for social ventures. The justification and the theoretical underpinnings of the market-based framework are further supported by discussing various other theories and concepts.FindingsThe framework identifies three capabilities that social entrepreneurs need to develop for generating social value and transformation: network structure, market practices and market pictures. Several examples from tourism and hospitality social enterprises are analyzed for showing the applicability and usefulness of the framework.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper proposes a conceptual framework as well as several research directions for further testing, refining and expanding it.Practical implicationsBy applying the framework on several tourism and hospitality social enterprises, the paper provides practical implications about the capabilities that social enterprises should develop for engaging with other market actors to identify and exploit (new) market opportunities for social value co-creation, and influence market plasticity for forming new markets and driving social change.Social implicationsThe suggested framework identifies the capabilities and the ways in which (tourism/hospitality) social enterprises can engage with and form markets for co-creating social value and escalating their social impacts through social transformation.Originality/valueThe paper provides a new marketing approach (that overcomes the limitations of traditional economic theories) for understanding how social enterprises can shape, manage and engage with social markets for generating social value.

Evaluation of co-creation perspective in networked collaboration platforms

This study addresses a specific challenge of non-utilized benefits from the potential of networked structures, design, and technological solutions in collaboration platforms as a source for improving and stimulating internal and external co-creation opportunities. The organization of the collaboration between diverse set of actors in sharing knowledge and resources results in fragmented value co-creation processes of networked platforms (online communities, social networks, networks of practice, etc.). Collaboration platforms may differ in terms of users or purpose, but they all seem to share a number of common characteristics such as mass participation in online interactions, inclusion of information communication technologies (ICT) together with people in knowledge creation and aggregation, etc. The article evaluates the readiness of networked platforms to generate intended co-creation value by conducting a qualitative research on 30 collaboration platforms in Lithuania using a Social Indices calculation methodology (Skaržauskienė & Gudelytė, 2015). The study assesses the platforms with the use of three integrated indicators, namely, capacity for creativity, capacity for aggregating knowledge, and capacity for decision making. The research results provide valuable information on the trends in managing collaboration platforms, distilled best practices, and opened up opportunities for scientific reasoning to design engagement strategies.

Observations on quality senior health business: success patterns and policy implications.

Population ageing is a global issue that affects almost every country. Most ageing researches focused on demand side and studies related to supply side were relatively scarce. This study selected quality enterprises focus on ageing health and analysed their patterns on providing quality services successfully. Our study selected quality senior health enterprises and explored their success patterns through face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews with CEO of each enterprise in 2013. Thirty-three quality senior health enterprises in Taiwan. Thirty-three CEO's of enterprises were interviewed individually. None. Core values and vision, historical development, organization structure, services/products provided, delivering channels, customer relationships and further development strategies. Our results indicated success patterns for senior enterprises that there were meeting diversified lifestyles and substitutive needs for the elderly and their caregivers, providing a total solution for actual/virtual integration and flexible one-stop shopping services. We classified these enterprises by used degree of clicks-and-mortar of services and residing situation of the elderly. Industry characteristics and policy implications were summarized. Our observations will serve as a primary evidenced base for enterprises developing their senior market, and also for opening dialogue between customers and enterprises to facilitate valuable opportunities for co-creation between the supply and demand sides.

Managing responses to online reviews: an opportunity for value co-creation?

Companies use social media differently according to their mental models and specific historical antecedents. Accordingly, service providers’ online interactions with customers can produce different results in terms of value creation. This qualitative study explores the provider’s role in value (co)-creation in social-media contexts. More specifically, it analyses providers’ reactions (i.e. responses and non-responses) to usergenerated reviews and investigates what type of value creation derives from the customer-provider online interaction. For this purpose, we collected hotel responses publicly available on TripAdvisor, using the web-based ethnography method. To analyse the data, we combined the social media sensemaking model proposed by Ryden et al. with the value-creation framework proposed by Gronroos and Voima. The findings contribute to the literature about online value co-creation by suggesting a taxonomy of providers’ reactions to online reviews. As regards managerial implications, we provide recommendations for formulating responses to online reviews.

Innovation for impact: Business innovation for inclusive growth

The research uses a literature review and case studies to build a framework that describes factors leading to successful innovation for impact (I4I): innovation that enhances corporate performance and creates significant, lasting social impact. Five organizational elements influence I4I: strategic alignment, responsible purpose, institutional drivers, stakeholder engagement, and business model management. Six institutional drivers influence I4I: values, leadership, culture, strategy, structure, and policies. Firms can achieve lasting social impact by targeting systemic factors using the ecology for inclusive growth. Stakeholder engagement increases opportunities for co-creation and enables business-model innovation through knowledge gathering and creation. Strengthening and aligning organizational elements increases the likelihood of I4I, improving corporate performance and enhancing business landscape. Institutionalizing I4I creates an engine for business-model innovation, a powerful source of competitive advantage.

Looking back to see ahead: the changing face of users in European e-commerce law

The ubiquity of the Internet has given rise to new hybrid types of online users such as hybrid consumers and prosumers. This paper looks at some of the new legal challenges raised by the exciting opportunities for active participation and co-creation by such users in electronic commerce transactions. The method employed, in homage to Jon Bing, is to look back in time to understand how users in sales transactions have been progressively regarded--alternatively exposed to risk, alternatively protected--and how contract law has adapted to such new developments. The paper shows that, even following the emergence of the hybrid consumer and the prosumer, there are strong arguments for the consumer's continued protection, not least because of the increase in technological sophistication and complexity. The paper seeks to test somewhat the limits where consumer protection ends and where general contract law--with its attendant doctrines like caveat emptor--would apply again with respect to the aforementioned new users.

A dynamic market conceptualization for entrepreneurial marketing: the co-creation of opportunities

The entrepreneurial marketing domain should consider opportunity co-creation as a foundational construct for advancing the discipline. This paper integrates emerging views in entrepreneurship with an evolving, service-dominant logic of marketing to develop a market conceptualization for exploring uncertainty in dynamic social and economic environments. With this market conceptualization, opportunities are continually co-created through the development and communication of value propositions, the derivation and determination of value, and the (re)formation of markets. Emerging research around the process of opportunity co-creation is used to create an initial definition and theoretical considerations.

Creating competitive advantage by institutionalizing corporate social innovation

This study builds on corporate innovation, social innovation, and corporate social innovation literature to develop a preliminary theory. The study then uses case studies to build a framework that describes factors leading to successful corporate social innovation (CSI).The study focuses on social innovations that create social value and competitive advantage. In the framework, three organizational components enhance CSI: strategic alignment, institutional elements, and clarity in intent. Three institutional elements enable CSI processes: stakeholder engagement, operational structures and processes, and organizational culture. Integrating CSI into strategy and operations creates opportunities for co-creation, thereby creating shared value and enhancing competitive advantage. This study concludes by highlighting managerial implications and future research opportunities.

Customization in bicycle retailing

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of customization by investigating how retailers and consumers interact in bicycle retailing. The paper focuses on three high-end bicycle retailers. Building on qualitative data gathered through interviews and netnography, this study takes both retailers’ and consumers’ processes into account. The results show that retailers capitalize on external and internal opportunities for co-creation, including new technologies, production and distribution innovations, and social media. Retailers’ planning for co-creation plays a significant role in providing a unique shopping experience for consumers. This includes supply chain solutions such as effective inventory and warehousing systems, partnerships and outsourcing, tracking, and postponement, which facilitate simplicity. Retailers rely on feedback from consumers to improve their planning and implementation processes. In terms of consumer processes, several emotions are evident, including the sense of standing-out and self-esteem, fun and coolness, creativity and imagination, and most importantly, the possibility of reflecting one’s personality in self-designed bikes. Systems that are easy to interact with, such as interactive online configurators, contribute to consumers’ cognitive processes. Loyalty and positive word-of-mouth turns out to be a common manifestation of the behavior associated with such co-creation processes. We also reflect on how, by what means, and why consumers and retailers engage in co-creation through customization, mainly pertaining to learning and innovation. Our results also point to various possible outcomes from such processes for consumer and retailers; including expressing ones personality and individuality for consumers, and providing product variety efficiently, and boosting brand image for retailers.

The role of sustainability policy in influencing service innovation. a case study of Changzhou BRT system

Purpose. The main aim of this paper is to assess and analyze the role of sustainability policy in influencing service innovation practices in the context of public transport. The intension is to understand the critical dimensions related to sustainability policy driven service innovation. The critical dimensions mainly focus on the relationship between innovation and policy, the challenges, competences and opportunities driven by sustainability policy. Design/methodology/approach. The paper is of an explorative nature. Critical case study method is adopted in this paper to understand the role of sustainability policy in service innovation. Findings. The study reveals that national sustainability policy framework drives the formulation and implementation of sustainable service innovation as a tool to achieve sustainable public transit system. The sustainability policy context in terms of responsibility, power and resource integration creates shared-platform that induces service innovation, which create value co-creation opportunities to the customers and other stakeholders. Research limitations/implications. The single case-study design of the present research does not enable empirical generalizations to be made. Contribution/value. The paper makes an original contribution to the study of sustainable and innovative public transit by explicitly linking the adoption of sustainability policy and its role in service innovation and value co-creation embedded on social and environmental perspectives. Practical implications. National policies often cannot influence local/urban transport directly, but become effective tool towards service innovation and value co-creation.

A Framework for Value Co-creation through Customization and Personalization in the Context of Machine Tool PSS

In this paper, a hybrid PSS business model is considered for discussing the framework for value co-creation through customization and personalization. The framework consists of a business model, an engagement model which leads to value creation through customization, and a detailed service execution plan which offers opportunities for value co-creation through co-design, co-production and co-delivery, leading to personalization. The conventional approaches for PSS design do not explicitly address the aspect of customization and personalization through co-creation activities. The expected benefits for the provider and other stakeholders will be in terms of knowledge co-creation and ensuring enhanced customer experience through personalization.

Dreams and change processes in an ex-prostitute under relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy: Ferenczian and relational views

This paper explores the change processes that took place in a woman, an ex-prostitute, in the context of psychotherapeutic treatment over a period of over three years. The treatment took place within a relational psychotherapeutic setting influenced by the ideas formulated by Sándor Ferenczi regarding trauma, as well as by his intense involvement with and commitment to his patients, as expressed in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Ferenczi, 1988). Zoe, the current patient, was a woman born in Latin America who emigrated to Spain at the age of 28 and became trapped, for nearly a decade, in a mesh of prostitution networks. She eventually entered regular psychotherapeutic treatment at the age of 39. Her change process is an example of the mutual influence between the factors of resilience that characterized her and the opportunity for co-creation that the treatment signifies. The marks of the intense traumatic burden of Zoe's history and the rays of sunlight and hope that she is currently experiencing become intermingled in the dreams evoked and brought to the treatment setting. Zoe's capacity for resilience and the potential for founding self-object relations, ethically implied, that therapists can offer construct a scenario that brings back to life the essence of Ferenczi from 1932.

Critical service logic: making sense of value creation and co-creation

Because extant literature on the service logic of marketing is dominated by a metaphorical view of value co-creation, the roles of both service providers and customers remain analytically unspecified, without a theoretically sound foundation for value creation or co-creation. This article analyzes value creation and co-creation in service by analytically defining the roles of the customer and the firm, as well as the scope, locus, and nature of value and value creation. Value creation refers to customers’ creation of value-in-use; co-creation is a function of interaction. Both the firm’s and the customer’s actions can be categorized by spheres (provider, joint, customer), and their interactions are either direct or indirect, leading to different forms of value creation and co-creation. This conceptualization of value creation spheres extends knowledge about how value-in-use emerges and how value creation can be managed; it also emphasizes the pivotal role of direct interactions for value co-creation opportunities.

Managing knowledge within networked innovation

The purpose of this paper is to research firms’ knowledge management practices within the context of networked innovation between multiple actors. The analysis is based on case research carried out with six companies. Based on earlier literature and the theoretical framework of the paper, two models of networked innovation can be distinguished according to knowledge management needs: networks focusing on the transaction of explicit knowledge and intellectual property, and networks focusing on the co-creation of new knowledge and business opportunities. The paper argues that a strategic approach to knowledge management is a key element of success within networked innovation, both in the theory and in the practices of firms. In that way, firms are able to manage knowledge within networked innovation when they understand their partners’ business models and strategic intents, for example their motivation to collaborate.

Aplicación de la Lógica Dominante del servicio (LDS) en el sector turístico: el marketing interno como antecedente de la cultura de co-creación de innovaciones con clientes y empleados

This research seeks to achieve a deeper understanding of the Internal Marketing (IM) concept, considered as an operant resource, according to the Service Dominant Logic (SDL) theory, as well as to analyze the IM contribution to the achievement of competitive advantage. To this end, the research examines the IM effect on the organizations' predisposition to involve their clients and first-line employees in the development of new services, widening in this way the opportunities for value co-creation, again from a SDL viewpoint. The conceptual model is tested on a 240 national sample of hotels using structural equations modelling. The results support that those firms more involved in IM practices are also more willing to co-develop new services with their customers and first-line employees, which ultimately improve in a sustained way customer-related performance and overall firm's performance.

Towards a New Model of Co-Creation of Value in E-Learning Service Systems

Advances in information and communication technologies make e-learning an integral part of everyday life. An e-learning service can be viewed as a technology-based service system that provides educational value through instructor-learner interaction. However, little attention has been given to the services aspect of e-learning in scholarly literature. This paper examines how the conceptual framework of Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME), a new academic discipline also known as service science, can be applied to design innovative e-learning systems for higher education. The author introduces a service-driven model of e-learning that can be used to develop effective educational systems that will provide knowledge co-creation opportunities and meet the needs and expectations of learners in the 21st century.

Vulnerability and Resilience in Natural Disasters: A Marketing and Public Policy Perspective

This essay addresses how the definitions of disaster and vulnerability serve as guides for market and policy responses and shows how a fundamental lack of understanding of what creates a disaster and what constitutes human (and consumer) vulnerability constrains the ability of individuals, communities, and institutions to mitigate and/or recover from natural hazards and the responses that follow. The essay outlines the current state of affairs on conceptualizations of disaster and vulnerability, distinguishes between risk and vulnerability, and notes ten paradoxes of disaster that create constraints on resilience. Fundamentally, the perspective taken here is that disaster is socially constructed and that vulnerability is a dynamic process that depends on a host of contextual factors. The essay shows that sustainable models of economic, social, and environmental development are at the heart of disaster and vulnerability analysis. Furthermore, it argues that market and policy responses must consider both the resource deficits and adaptive capacities of disaster survivors and the characteristics of the environments in which they live to cocreate opportunities for resilience.

The Business Model in Practice and its Implications for Entrepreneurship Research

While the term “business model” has gained widespread use in the practice community, the academic literature on this topic is fragmented and confounded by inconsistent definitions and construct boundaries. In this study, we review prior research and reframe the business model with an entrepreneurial lens. We report on a discourse analysis of 151 surveys of practicing managers to better understand their conceptualization of a business model. We find that the underlying dimensions of the business model are resource structure, transactive structure, and value structure, and discuss the nature and implications of dimensional dominance for firm characteristics and behavior. These findings provide new directions for theory development and empirical studies in entrepreneurship by linking the business model to entrepreneurial cognition, opportunity co-creation and organizational outcomes.

VCRM

Virtual worlds provide companies opportunities for valuable co-creation and co-production with their customers. In order to harness this potential, companies need to design effective entry strategies for virtual customer relationship management or vCRM. Understanding how self-expression and collaboration work in virtual worlds can help design better customer-facing strategies. In this paper, we provide a roadmap for companies that want to leverage virtual worlds for vCRM.