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The strategies to assess potential and realized customer value have received surprisingly little attention in management literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine potential customer value assessment strategies for business-to-business (B2B) firms and their special characteristics.

The empirical part of the study draws from an exploratory, two-part field study involving three pilot firms, and seven best practice firms in customer value assessment. The research design followed an inductive, discovery-oriented grounded theory approach. Primary data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 35 business managers from ten B2B firms.

The study identifies three customer value assessment strategies adopted by firms in business markets: Emergent value sales strategy; Life-cycle value management strategy; and Dedicated value specialist strategy. These strategies highlight different ways of managing and coordinating organizational units in different phases of the customer value assessment process.

The study was conducted from the supplier's perspective and is context-bound to firms operating in B2B markets.

Managers need to select an appropriate strategy for customer value assessment depending on market and offering characteristics, and assign clear responsibilities for value potential identification, baseline assessment, and long-term value realization.

The extant literature on customer value lacks understanding on customer value assessment strategies. The present study identifies three strategies that illuminate the required resources and organizational units at different phases of the customer value assessment process.

This study aims to examine strategies for customer value assessment used by best practice suppliers in business-to-business markets.

An exploratory two-part field study using a grounded theory approach.

It should not be a difficult question – is the customer getting value for money? You offer them something, and if they like it, they pay for it and use it. However, it gets harder when the product lasts longer – particularly, if there is a significant service component. And what the customer considers important may not be what the supplier is focusing on. So, it is worth asking what companies in global business-to-business markets do to assess customer value when they deliver complex products with a high service content. What is current best practice? And is it good enough?

This is an exploratory study based on qualitative methodology, so the research process is necessarily subjective. Further research could investigate a wider group of firms and look at the performance implications of alternative strategies for customer value assessment.

The paper focuses on well-regarded suppliers operating globally that have complex product offerings with a high service component. It identifies three distinct strategies for customer value assessment.

This study considers customer value from a supplier perspective and suggests ways in which research might be extended to include the customer perception of realized value.

The paper draws attention to the need to consider customer value assessment as a process and determine whether expected benefits are achieved in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the dialogue, access, risk assessment and transparency model of value co-creation processes (dialogue, access, risk and transparency) on new service market performance (NSMP) with the mediating role of value-informed pricing in the context of business-to-business (B2B).

The data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 230 managers of the telecommunications industry in Malaysia and analyzed through structural equation modeling using SmartPLS v.3.3.3 software.

This study found that dialogue and transparency are predictors of NSMP. The findings indicate that value-informed pricing plays a mediating role in the relationship between dialogue and transparency with NSMP.

Disclosing pricing related information, providing up to date information to the customers, making clear to the customers about new offerings would certainly influence value-informed pricing. Thus, managers can enhance customer engagement in the interaction processes to better understand customer expectations of new services and how the new services should be priced.

The link between value co-creation and value-informed pricing has been only conceptualized in literature. This study has opened a new stream of research, examining the relationship of interactional-based value co-creation process with value-informed pricing and NSMP in the context of B2B relationship from providers’ perspective.

The service‐dominant logic describes customer‐actualized value as being idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual, and meaning laden. Since positive word‐of‐mouth (WOM) is an expression of customer‐actualized value, the paper postulate that WOM is not only related to a holistic set of assessments of the service experience but also to the idiosyncratic nature of the individual customer. In particular, do socially oriented individuals have a greater propensity to engage in positive WOM? The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses that socially oriented personality traits, and personal values as well as a set of dimensions of the total service experience, are antecedents of positive WOM. The context studied is a surgical operation involving considerable personal meaning and implication in the whole service process.

A cohort of 500 surgical patients are studied prior to, three‐days after and one‐month post‐surgery. Independent variables include the socially oriented personality traits of agreeableness and extraversion, social‐ vs self‐oriented personal values, as well as dimensions of the total service experience assessed by information adequacy, pain and discomfort, patient‐to‐patient interaction, patient‐to‐personnel interaction, and recovery outcomes. The dependent variable is the strength of positive WOM intentions.

The sociability of surgery patients as measured by both their personality traits and socially oriented values is significantly related to the strength of positive WOM intentions. Self‐oriented values are not associated with positive WOM intentions. Also, to varying degrees, all dimensions of the total service experience are associated with positive WOM intentions.

The paper is the first to illustrate that, in a given service context, the antecedents of customer loyalty may be complex, not only dependent on customer assessments of their interactions and experiences throughout the service process, but also relative to their dispositional characteristics such as sociability. The consistency of the results for positive WOM assessed at three‐days and one‐month post‐surgery adds to the robustness of the findings. This paper makes a significant contribution to the service‐dominant logic and the concept of value co‐creation.

This first paper examines total benefits and total costs of product–service designs as antecedents to customer value assessment. It introduces the reader to all the papers in this volume. The first half of the paper offers a model of customer value assessment. This section describes research studies in industrial marketing contexts that illustrate the core propositions in the model. The second half of the paper provides brief introductions to the papers in this volume; these papers offer further evidence supporting the view that discontinuous innovations offer superior customer value but customers tend to eventually become increasingly comfortable with the status quo and move away from adopting superior proven technologies. This paper advocates being mindful of the marketplace dynamics affecting value. The volume serves to increase knowledge and understanding of the dynamic forces affecting changes in customer value.

To provide an alternative view of customer value and service quality as conceptualized in the service‐profit chain.

A survey of the vast and diverse literature on the concepts of value and quality is used to reconceptualize these constructs as they are used in the service‐profit chain. The concept of intrinsic value and quality is proposed as an addition to the extrinsic value and quality concepts already apparent in the chain.

The service‐profit chain is based on the premise that profitability to a firm derives from customer satisfaction and loyalty, which, in turn, are derived from a customer's sense of value received. This value, it is argued, is calculated with reference to the perceived quality of what is received, balanced against the aggregated costs to the customer of availing themselves of the service. This paper questions the sufficiency of the assumption that value offered to a customer resides solely in the customer's perception of what has been experienced in and through the service encounter. Correspondingly, it is argued that value to the customer may reside also in intrinsic qualities or attributes of a service.

The idea of value and quality being built into a service offering (intrinsic) has value for both practising service managers and academic researchers. Several avenues for future investigation are posited.

Throughout this study, the authors sought to identify the antecedents and consequences of a multi-dimensional consumption-value construct. Data were collected from sports spectators in Japan (n=372) and the United States (n=396). The results indicate that three quality dimensions (functional, technical and aesthetic quality) have a significant impact on their respective value dimensions in the context of sporting events. Moreover, the constructs of entertainment and community prestige have positive effects on customers' behavioural intentions.

Customer value‐based pricing is increasingly recognised by academics and practitioners as the most effective approach to pricing for companies wishing to achieve increased profitability and sustained success. However, despite this apparent support for the implementation of value‐based pricing, the practical reality is that more than 80 percent of companies continue to price their products and services primarily on the basis of costs and/or competitive price levels. The present study investigates this phenomenon and identifies the main reasons for this gap between aspiration and reality.

A two‐stage empirical approach is employed: first, in a qualitative research, the phenomenon of implementation of value‐based strategies with groups of business executives participating in pricing workshops is explored. The result of this qualitative stage was then used to develop a questionnaire which was tested upon a significantly larger and more stratified population. Finally cluster analysis to summarize the results of this quantitative research stage was employed.

Based on a survey of 81 executives representing a wide range of B2B and B2C industries in Germany, Austria, China, and the USA, five main obstacles to the implementation of value‐based pricing strategies have been identified: deficits in value assessment; deficits in value communication; lack of effective market segmentation; deficits in sales force management; and lack of support from senior management. The paper also provides a range of remedies to overcome these obstacles.

In extant literature there exists a gap between: the widespread understanding of the superiority of customer value‐based pricing strategies; and the circumstance that customer value‐based pricing strategies are currently the least widely diffused major pricing approach. We cover thus gap by highlighting which obstacles exist to the implementation of value‐based pricing strategies and provide a series of remedies to overcome these obstacles.

This study aims to investigate the new connotations, key antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of value-based selling (VBS) in the context of business to business (B2B) industrial marketing.

This study develops a comprehensive conceptual framework of VBS by analyzing and synthesizing the existing literature on VBS and associated solutions.

The paper describes the research streams of VBS; proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework consisting of the factors influencing VBS at the organizational, individual, customer and environmental levels, together with 12 research propositions; and provides an agenda for future research.

The paper is conceptual; empirical studies are required for examining the suggested propositions and agenda.

VBS is a process-oriented sales approach that involves multiple value creation and plays a crucial role in industrial solution selling. The successful implementation of VBS depends on the micro-foundations of an organization’s dynamic capabilities and considers the influence of individual, customer and environmental factors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to introduce value co-creation and dynamic capability theory into VBS research in the context of industrial marketing. It discusses the antecedents, outcomes and contingency factors of VBS in detail in the form of a comprehensive research framework and proposes a future research agenda. These discussions expand the theoretical research on VBS and provide useful implications for B2B marketing practice.

The resource‐based view (RBV) explores the role of key resources, identified as intangible assets and capabilities, in creating competitive advantage and superior performance. To a great extent the conceptual analysis and empirical research within the RBV has focused on the firm's perspective of key resources and the value to the firm of these key resources. The other perspective on key resources is to explore the value they provide to the customer. The question of interest here is whether key resources that hold value for the firm also hold value for the customer.

A depth interview was trialled as an appropriate methodology by which to begin to explore the customer perspective of key resources.

This trial suggests that further investigation of the customer perspective will provide a clearer view of customers' assessment of the firm's valuable resources. The trial interview with a key customer indicates there are subtle differences in the ranking of valued skills and capabilities between producers and customers that if verified in further trials, have potential to better focus firms on key resources valued by customers.

This trial provides insight into the process of identification of the factors that customers regard as the firm's valuable resources and how this influences their choice of firm. Differences in ranking of key resources by customers compared to those of producers could lead to re‐evaluation of skills and experience background for staff recruitment purposes, and training programs to better reflect customer valuation preferences.