Value proposition

Abstract: Driven by more demanding customers, global competition, and slow-growth economies and industries, many organizations search for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage. Past attempts have largely looked internally within the organization for improvement, such as reflected by quality management, reengineering, downsizing, and restructuring. The next major source for competitive advantage likely will come from more outward orientation toward customers, as indicated by the many calls for organizations to compete on superior customer value delivery. Although the reasons for these calls are sound, what are the implications for managing organizations in the next decade and beyond? This article addresses this question. It presents frameworks for thinking about customer value, customer value learning, and the related skills that managers will need to create and implement superior customer value strategies.

Abstract: Central to service-dominant (S-D) logic is the proposition that the customer becomes a co-creator of value. This emphasizes the development of customer–supplier relationships through interaction and dialog. However, research to date suggests relatively little is known about how customers engage in the co-creation of value. In this article, the authors: explore the nature of value co-creation in the context of S-D logic; develop a conceptual framework for understanding and managing value co-creation; and utilize field-based research to illustrate practical application of the framework. This process-based framework provides a structure for customer involvement that takes account of key foundational propositions of S-D logic and places the customer explicitly at the same level of importance as the company as co-creators of value. Synthesis of diverse concepts from research on services, customer value and relationship marketing into a new process-based framework for co-creation provide new insights into managing the process of value co-creation.

Abstract: 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.

Abstract: There is currently a broad awareness of open innovation and its relevance to corporate R&D. The implications and trends that underpin open innovation are actively discussed in terms of strategic, organizational, behavioral, knowledge, legal and business perspectives and its economic implications. This special issue aims to advance the R&D, innovation, and technology management perspective by building on past and present studies in the field and providing future directions. Recent research, including the papers in this special issue, demonstrates an increasing range of situations where the concept is regarded as applicable. Most research to date has followed the outside-in process of open innovation, while the inside-out process remains less explored. A third coupled process of open innovation is also attracting significant research attention. These different processes show why it is necessary to have a full understanding of how and where open innovation can add value in knowledge-intensive processes. There may be a need for a creative interpretation and adaptation of the value propositions, or business models, in each situation. In other words, there are important implications for new and emerging methods of R&D management.

Abstract: The virtues and value of loyalty the economics of customer loyalty the right customers the right employees productivity the right investors in search of failure the right measures transforming the value proposition partnerships for change getting started - the path toward zero defections.