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Scholars have affirmed that a conceptualization of value co-creation in business relationships should reflect the nature and characteristics of interactional processes that occur in use. The advent of sales and marketing technologies, however, is changing the nature and dynamics of interactions. New trends in digitalization have played a significant role in emphasizing and facilitating the occurrence of business-to- business (B2B) collaborative or sharing economy. The B2B sharing economy and value co-creation are closely intertwined, as businesses harness the power of shared resources and collaboration to generate value in diverse ways. This study highlights the importance of going beyond value co-creation in studying B2B collaborative economy, unpacking the interconnected value processes that influence value co-creation. It also aims at showing the activities that characterize multiple joint value spheres among actors.

The study consists of 49 qualitative interviews with managers operating in different industries.

The paper shows that when considering digital B2B contexts, five joint value spheres in business relationships should be considered: a value co-creation, a value appropriation, a value communication, a value measurement and a value representation sphere. Each one is characterized by specific activities that are relevant from a managerial point of view.

This study highlights that value co-creation has often been over stressed when discussing business interactions, also with the advent of new technologies. Rather, this study offers a more comprehensive view of value co-creation that includes different value processes occurring in joint value spheres. These further processes are relevant because failure and success in business relationships within the B2B sharing economy are often dependent from activities outside the value co-creation process, which strongly affect it. Such knowledge will also open up new research venues and opportunities to better contribute to the practice of value management in business relationships.

Presents a dynamic programming model for studying the effects of automation acquisition on the value, cost, and quality control processes in an aggregate single product environment. The model provides the optimal automation acquisition policy, that is the optimal amount of automation to be acquired and the optimal timing for acquiring it, so that the accumulated net product value can be maximized. The model can be used with different sets of learning rates and cost data. It can also be used with non‐uniform learning rates among the different processes, and non‐uniform automation effects on the value, cost, and quality control learning curves. The cases both of unbounded and bounded learning curves are examined. Selective results demonstrate that the early acquisition of the optimal amount of automation enhances the accumulated net product value.

While the importance of measuring customer satisfaction levels is well established, less research exists on how organizations operationalize such knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to describe an action research (AR) case study resulting in a workshop model to operationalize the concept of value. The model facilitates organizational learning and mindset changes in order to remove both cultural and structural barriers to change.

The model is based on AR in three case organizations. The research, over four years in the primary case organization, included phases of planning, action (implementing), observing (evaluating), and analysis and reflection as a basis for new planning and action. By using secondary case organizations the results and methods from the primary case organization were validated and further developed.

The model includes methods to help organizations understand and define what customer value is for any given specific organization, tools to change the employee outlook from a functional/feature oriented mindset into a process/values oriented mindset, and tools to help organizations design and manage the value‐adding core processes. The results after implementation clearly indicate that cutting costs and eliminating waste does not necessarily mean that the processes will be less effective. On the contrary, customers are significantly more satisfied than before while the processes cost less and take less time. Furthermore, throughout the project, the employee satisfaction index improved.

The model presented expands the steps of understanding, creating and delivering value by changing internal processes and employee mindsets.

The purpose of this paper is to make contributions toward new knowledge and understanding of how marketers can provide effective online customization experiences for customers. The practicality of online mass customization has received much attention as consumers perceive more value from customized products than from their standardized counterparts. Little research has been done to understand consumers’ behavioral intentions in response to these value additions. This study incorporates product information framing in developing and empirically testing a model of the relationship between online customization and price sensitivity, endowment addition and expected likelihood of product return.

The relationship among the constructs specified in the model was tested using multiple group structural equation modeling analysis.

The findings indicate that consumers perceived knowledge gain via customization process influences the utilitarian value, which directly impacts levels of likelihood of product return and price sensitivity. The process value, on the hedonic side, influences more on the endowment addition. Endowment addition is found to mediate the relationship between the hedonic benefits and the two utilitarian outcome variables: price sensitivity and likelihood of product return.

Understanding the consequences of customization is particularly crucial for marketers. This research is the first to expand and further our knowledge of customization, particularly in relation to its outcomes of customers’ behavioral intentions.

By combining consumer culture theory and service dominant logic, this study proposes that value might be understood as value-in-acquisition, such that value outcomes result from the acquisition process in which broader social forces shape the exchange process.

This study addresses low-income consumers, for whom societal arrangements strongly determine service interactions. Qualitative interviews reveal service value processes and outcomes for low-income consumers during acquisition processes.

For low-income consumers, inclusion, status, resource access and emotional relief represent key value outcomes. Important value processes shape those value outcomes, reflecting broader societal arrangements at macro, meso and micro levels. Marketing constitutes an institutional arrangement that establishes an empowered “consumer” role. Value processes are hindered if consumers sense that their agency in this role is diminished, because marketing interactions give precedence to other social roles.

Marketing should be studied as an institutional arrangement that shapes value creation processes during acquisition. Micro-level value processes have important implications for service quality and service value. Value outcomes thus might be designed in the acquisition process, not just for the offering.

The acquisition process for any good or service should be designed with its own value proposition, separate to the core product or service. Careful design of value processes during acquisition could mitigate conflict between social roles and those of consumption.

There is value in the acquisition process, independent of the value embedded in the goods and services.

Performance measurement and management in firms where knowledge is the central strategic resource provide composite challenges. Not only are the knowledge resources tacit, collective, complex, deeply rooted in culture and hard to imitate and transfer, but the processes of value creation and their outputs are also of a more or less intangible nature. This paper is an attempt to give an alternative activity‐based entrance to the field of intellectual capital and performance management. On the basis of three case studies the paper illustrates the development and utilisation of a new method for linking intellectual capital and value creation based on the three phases of modelling, measuring, and action. In parallel the concepts of resolution, elevation and conveyance are developed and explored as notions giving guidance and evaluation in the process of developing and using a measurement system for intellectual capital management.

It has not been enough to include “quality dimensions” into a product or a service and expect the outcome to be world‐class. Total value signifies a set of multidimensional measures towards realizing a competitive product (goods or services) that the customers would like and are willing to pay a premium price for. A “quality dimensions” set is one of its (total value) multidimensional measures. Such multidimensional value considerations would be vital for a company in maintaining a competitive edge in today’s global and rapidly changing marketplace. The first question is why a “quality dimensions” set has not been enough? The second question is what are those multidimensional sets of measures that make‐up this total value content? The last question is how to determine a cumulative total value‐index that accounts for these sets of measures so that an organization could use this total value‐index to optimize its product realization process and thereby control its (an organization’s) degree of competitiveness. The paper attempts to answer these questions.

In the discussion on service‐dominant logic and its consequences for value creation and marketing the inner meaning of the value‐in‐use notion and the nature of service marketing have not been considered thoroughly. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning of a service logic as a logic for consumption and provision, respectively, and explore the consequences for value creation and marketing.

Being a research‐based paper, the topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development.

Discussing the differences between value‐in‐exchange and value‐in‐use, the paper concludes that value‐in‐exchange in essence concerns resources used as a value foundation which are aimed at facilitating customers' fulfilment of value‐in‐use. When accepting value‐in‐use as a foundational value creation concept customers are the value creators. Adopting a service logic makes it possible for firms to get involved with their customers' value‐generating processes, and the market offering is expanded to including firm‐customer interactions. In this way, the supplier can become a co‐creator of value with its customers. Drawing on the analysis, ten concluding service logic propositions are put forward.

The analysis provides a foundation for further development of a service logic for customers and suppliers, respectively, (“service logic” is preferred over the normally used “service‐dominant logic”) as well for further analysis of the marketing consequences of adopting such a business and marketing logic.

Marketing practitioners will find new ways of understanding customers' value creation and of developing marketing strategies with an aim to engage suppliers with their customers' consumption processes in order to enhance customer satisfaction.

For a scholarly audience, the paper provides a more truly service‐centric understanding of value creation and of its marketing consequences. For a practitioner audience, it offers service‐based means of further developing marketing practices.

This study is embedded in social exchange and transaction cost theories. The purpose of this paper is to compare the relative importance of process value and outcome value in building affective and cognitive relationship strength and to compare the relative effects of each type of relationship strength on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty.

This empirical study features a quantitative approach. The sample comprises 167 business-to-business (B2B) customers of a large transportation and logistics company in Vietnam.

Process value and outcome value have different effects on affective relationship strength. The effect of process value is greater than that of outcome value. In addition, cognitive strength has a stronger impact on both attitudinal and behavioral loyalty than affective strength.

These insights extend extant literature regarding the process and outcome components of the service assessment. Further studies also should use a cross-industry, cross-country sample to examine the potential moderating effects of country- or industry-specific factors. These findings show B2B managers how to make appropriate resource allocation and investment decisions to enhance relationship strength and resulting customer loyalty.

To clarify the links among customer value, relationship strength and customer loyalty, this study examines the relative importance of rational and non-rational factors (i.e. process value vs outcome value and affective strength vs cognitive strength) for relationship performance. Unlike most prior research, this study is set in the B2B context of a developing country.

Purpose – This chapter proposes three main objectives in relation to understanding customer involvement in business networks. First, to identify important aspects of the network structure and environment and how the actions of the customer and other network participants create and maintain these. Second, to identify and explore the mechanisms and processes of resource integration in the network. Third, to identify the capabilities and competencies that customers bring to the network, and to understand how these are enhanced and developed.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual.

Research implications – We recognize that aspects of the resources themselves are important and that the characteristics of the resource and the way in which partners align them were key components of resource analysis.

Practical implications – We note that the interaction of different operant and operand resource combinations opens new doors to customer knowledgeability and involvement, where power over either authoritative or allocative resources in itself will not guarantee value creation.

Social implications – We support the call for the development of more sociologically enriched and complex models of interagent resource exchange. In particular, we would advise the need for a better understanding of how different network structures and environments are created and maintained through domination, legitimation, and signification processes.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter addresses the gap in our understanding of how customer involvement in business-to-business networks may influence learning, value cocreation, and innovation. This chapter makes an important contribution to research in the field in that it investigates how the inclusion of the customer in business networks alters current assumptions and practices.