eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY:

A key element of Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing (SDL) is a value co-creation framework, in which the emphasis is not simply on the activities of producers or consumers but on the participation and interaction of multiple resource-integrating actors, tied together in shared systems of exchange. Recently, SDL's elaborations on this type of value-creation configurations have grown increasingly complex in relation to their contextualization and constitute a promising point of departure for understanding how value is co-created. The present study aims to address that very question by extending the current understanding of SDL through a conceptualization and analysis of value and value co-creation from a cultural approach.

METHODOLOGY:

Leveraging insights from Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing (SDL) and Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), this exploratory study develops and describes a new framework for understanding value co-creation. As an empirical illustration, the study presents findings from a qualitative case study of Radio Helsinki. Textual analysis of naturally occurring data is carried out to abstract cultural practice in Radio Helsinki that empirically illustrates the nature of value and the process of value co-creation within a marketplace culture.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION:

While much of the existing literature on SDL has concerned itself with discussing value co-creation on the level of theory, the integration of SDL and CCT as proposed in the study, establishes a framework for both conceptualizing and analyzing value co-creation in contemporary market environments. As the empirical analysis illustrates, the concept of marketplace culture clarifies the duality of the context of value co-creation and the practice-oriented cultural approach provides means to explore the complex intertwining of structure and agency in the co-creation process. Within a marketplace culture, individual efforts to co-create value are neither purely agentic nor fully conditioned but a form of reflexivity bounded by the particular configuration of culturally constituted practices where shared ways to ascribe meaning to the world are continuously negotiated. Consequently, these foundational practices are of importance to researchers and practitioners who wish to understand and advance value creation in particular marketplace contexts.