Search results

Organizations increasingly seek to leverage open innovation (OI) communities to generate and advance novel ideas through collaborative innovation efforts of their members. However, success is far from guaranteed, as OI communities can only thrive depending on individual and collective member contributions. This study aims to examine individual and social determinants that encourage members to first generate novel ideas, then collaboratively advance these ideas through cocreation with other members, a process this study terms member “(co)creativity.”

A survey design was used to collect data from 301 OI community members, which this study analyzed through component-based structural equation modeling using the partial least squares (PLS) method.

Drawing on componential theory of creativity and innovation, this study demonstrates the role of members’ creative identity, creative self-efficacy and domain-relevant knowledge as determinants for their novel idea generation. While novel idea generation leads to members’ participation in collaborative innovation, this relationship is partially mediated by members’ willingness to cocreate in this process. This process is further conditioned by social determinants and leads to members’ creative self-enrichment as a result of collaborating in OI communities.

Taking a member perspective, this study advances marketing innovation theorizing by investigating critical determinants of effective OI communities, informing managers about success factors that promote collaborative innovation in OI communities.

This helps overcome rather reductionist innovation models and highlights interdependencies between the individual and social determinants from a theoretical perspective while helping managers better understand important OI member profiles and social aspects that can foster the success of OI communities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the notion of member (co)creativity in OI communities and its determinants for effective collaborative innovation. This study also demonstrates self-enrichment as an important outcome of (co)creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the current understanding of organisational conditions that facilitate service design. Specifically, the focus is on organisational capabilities, interactive practices and individual abilities as units of analysis across service system levels. Grounded in design principles, the paper conceptualises and delineates illustrative service design conditions and introduces a respective service design capability-practice-ability (CPA) portfolio. In doing so, an emerging microfoundations perspective in the context of service design is advanced.

Conceptual paper.

This paper identifies and delineates a CPA that contributes to service design and ultimately customer experiences. The service design CPA consists of six illustrative constellations of service design capabilities, practices and abilities, which operate on different organisational levels. The service design CPA builds the foundation for in-depth research implications and future research opportunities.

The CPA framework suggests that if an organisation seeks to optimise service design and subsequent customer experiences, then individual- and organisational-level (cap)abilities and interactive practices should be optimised and synchronised across specific CPA constellations.

This paper provides the first microfoundations perspective for service design. It advances marketing theory through multilevel theorising around service design capabilities, practices and abilities and overcomes extant limitations of insular theorising in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify antecedents and consequences of customers’ value co-creation behaviour (VCB). VCB as a means to facilitate value realisation processes is gaining importance in service research and practice. Encouraging such enactments can be challenging, but can also offer competitive advantages.

We empirically investigate a conceptual model by converging three contemporary concepts of co-creation research – embeddedness, VCB and value-in-context – and examining the interdependencies between them. Data were collected in an online forum of a leading international weight-management firm.

Results suggest that customers’ embeddedness is a key antecedent of customers’ VCB in a service system. The three embeddedness dimensions – structural, relational and cultural – have a differential impact on customers’ VCB. Furthermore, findings illustrate that customers’ VCB has a significant impact on their object-oriented, self-oriented and brand-oriented social value-in-context outcomes.

This study contributes by empirically investigating and validating antecedents and consequences of VCB in a service system. In doing so, the study highlights the significance of the nature of customer’s social constellations to develop contexts where value outcomes are actualised. Understanding the factors that shape VCB offers insights for firms to recognise how and where value propositions can be deployed that drives on-going co-creation processes.

This study is the first empirical research to offer insights into important pre-conditions and subsequent outcomes concurrently to illustrate how customers’ VCB can be managed and nurtured for sustainable value co-creation processes within service systems. This research further advances mid-range theorizing and microfoundational perspectives in marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to consider a broadened suite of paradigmatic lenses to help better understand customer engagement during and beyond COVID-19. During this period of uncertainty and economic downturn, many customers are questioning their ways of living and being, and thus businesses are engaging customers in new and evolving ways. To appreciate this broadened realm of engagement requires researchers and businesses to embrace existential humanism as an alternative, yet complementary, paradigmatic lens.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors consider three distinct paradigmatic lenses on human (inter)action—economic rationalism, institutionalism and existential humanism—and apply these lenses to deepen the underlying theorizing of the customer engagement concept. Further, the authors illustrate how customers engage with businesses in distinct ways, seeking meaning congruent with the challenges faced during COVID-19.

The authors argue that the common tripartite model of cognitive, emotional and behavioral customer engagement, typically informed by reductionist and unilateral paradigmatic lenses, is insufficient to understand why customers seek to engage with businesses during and after COVID-19.

In providing a broader paradigmatic perspective, the authors make a plea for a stronger consideration and activation of spiritual engagement in marketing. The current COVID-19 environment challenges extant philosophical assumptions of engagement theorizing, which we address by way of existential humanism. The authors contribute through a more differentiated perspective of engagement, accounting for a broader spectrum of human experience. This enables more informed theorizing across levels of abstraction, while emphasizing diverse avenues for future engagement for a time even beyond COVID-19.

Service managers increasingly strive to achieve sustainability through strategies centered on circularity. With a focus on saving, extending and (re)generating resources and their enclosing service systems, circularity can contribute to environmental, social and financial gains. Yet, the notion of circularity is surprisingly understudied in service research. This article seeks to provide an initial conceptual understanding of circular service management, introducing illustrative strategies and research priorities for circular service management. This paper provides a roadmap for scholars, practitioners and policymakers to develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities from adopting circular services.

The authors explore the concept of circular service management by drawing upon existing literature on sustainability, circularity and service research. Strategies of circular service management and research priorities emerge on the basis of industry best practice examples and research on sustainability challenges and opportunities.

Service researchers have largely ignored the concept and role of circularity for service businesses. Extant research on the topic nearly exclusively features in non-service journals and/or does not seek to advance service theory through circularity. This article argues that circular service management enables the implementation of service thinking in the pursuit of sustainability and outlines four types of circular service management strategies.

The authors introduce the concept of circular service management and highlight the role of service research for designing and managing circular systems and operations. This article also offers a research agenda connecting managerial challenges and opportunities with key service research priorities for circular service management. This provides a roadmap for scholars, practitioners and policymakers to develop a deeper understanding of pursuing circular services, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future.

Increasingly, customers are demanding products that fit their individual needs. Many firms respond by cultivating product individualization via mass customization, often integrating this capability via interactive platforms that connect them with customers. Despite such customization, research to date has lacked cohesion, often taking the organizational, rather than customer, view. The purpose of this paper is to provide inconclusive theorizing in regard to customization from the consumers’ perspective.

The review and synthesis of the literature revealed that co-configuration is an underexplored domain of mass customization. Consequently, an initial conceptualization of co-configuration is developed and compared with current customization strategies. Specifically, the definition and boundary conditions of co-configuration are compared with three domains of mass customization, namely, co-production, co-construction and co-design. This led to the development of research priority areas to establish an agenda for future research on mass customization and its role in customer’ firm relationships.

This paper provides the delineation of four distinct consumer customization strategies, conceptualized in a matrix, and proposes separate customer journey visualizations. In advancing the theoretical understanding by means of a unifying typology, this paper identifies three existing Cs of mass customization (co-production, co-construction and co-design) and focuses specifically on a fourth (co-configuration), identified as an understudied mass customization strategy.

This paper extends the previous conceptualizations of mass customization comprising co-production, co-design and co-construction. The proposed typology establishes a foundation for four research priority areas that can improve both academic rigor and practical application.

The purpose of this paper is to advance extant theorizing around resource integration by conceptualizing and delineating the notion of a usage center. A usage center consists of a combination of interdependent actors that draw on resources across their individual usage processes to create value.

This paper provides a conceptual inquiry into the usage center.

This paper delineates the notion of a usage center by way of focal and peripheral resource integrators, as well as focal and peripheral resources that form part of interdependent resource usage processes. The conceptual analysis reveals the need for resources to be accessible and shareable to focal and peripheral actors, with rivalry and emergence central factors influencing the actor’s usage processes.

Responding to recent calls for research developing insights into multi-actor value cocreation, this paper is the first to comprehensively and coherently conceptualize the notion of a usage center. In doing so, the authors build an important foundation for future theorizing related to the potential emergence of usage centers as well as the cocreation of individual and collective value.

The ability to attract and retain volunteers is crucial for not-for-profit organizations, and consequently, the need to understand and manage volunteers’ engagement is paramount. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of five volunteer engagement dimensions (cognitive, affective, behavioral, social and spiritual engagement) on perceived value-in-context, and its subsequent role for volunteer retention. Thus, providing for the first time an understanding of how unique types of value are determined through different facets of volunteer engagement.

To establish the nature and consequences of volunteer engagement, the authors collaborated with an Australian not-for-profit service organization. Using a survey method, the authors studied the organization’s volunteer workforce resulting in 464 usable responses. To capture volunteers’ degree of spiritual engagement, this paper introduces a rigorously developed unidimensional measure.

The results demonstrate the importance of the five engagement dimensions on volunteers’ perceived value-in-context, while highlighting significant effect differences including some counterintuitive consequences. The authors also establish the role of spiritual engagement and demonstrate the impact of value-in-context for volunteer retention.

This research explores the volunteer engagement-retention chain, by empirically studying the role of value-in-context. The authors provide first evidence for the relationship between volunteer engagement and value-in-context, examining the independent yet relative effects of various facets of volunteer engagement. In doing so, the authors offer new insight into the dimensionality of the volunteer engagement construct, broadening its conceptualization to include spiritual engagement as a core constituent. The authors further demonstrate the impact of value-in-context on volunteer retention, helping organizations to better make sense of meaningful volunteer experiences with long-lasting impacts and mutual benefits.