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Social media has significantly impacted the value creation processes within the consumer–brand relationship. This study aims to examine value formation processes within a cosmetics social media brand community and to establish the types of value formation associated with different categories of interactions within a social media brand community.

The research adopted a netnographic approach and followed the operational protocols of netnography. Conversations in one large cosmetics social media brand community were observed and downloaded for analysis over a two-month period. Examples of value-creation and formation processes were identified using netnographic interpretative procedures to develop higher-order themes.

The findings supported the creation of a “Consumer and brand value creation and co-creation framework” highlighting disparate value types within the following interactions: consumer-to-consumer; brand-to-consumer; and consumer-to-brand. The identified value types were specific to the actors (i.e. consumers and brands) involved in value formation processes. The analysis also revealed consumers’ ability to independently generate value through direct interaction with a social media brand community and the brands’ role in supporting consumers in value formation through value facilitation.

The pivotal role of disparate actors’ interactions in value formation processes is highlighted, alongside the autonomous ability to form value with the aid of resources stored and shared within the social media brand community. The network of interactions and value-creation processes contribute to a holistic understanding of the interactions in a social media brand community. Furthermore, the research explores and highlights the emerging role of social media brand communities as “value vestiges”.

Contemporary service and marketing research on value co-creation and value co-destruction assume a one-dimensional view on value, ranging from positive value co-creation, alignment and high value to negative value co-destruction, misalignment and low value. This limitation has recently led researchers to conceptually develop more dynamic spatial-temporal models of how value is formed during the interaction, e.g. in terms of different relationships between practice elements (procedures, understandings and engagements) both within and between actors in “value formation spaces”. However, much of this research awaits validation and is in need of more details. This study aims to address this limitation with the purpose of detailing how and why the mechanisms in such spaces are formed.

Two different and interlinked typologies were analytically derived from previous research and applied on ethnographically-inspired multi-perspective empirical data from a service combining health care and transport service ecosystems, using a combination of interviews, observations and service design methodologies. The design in combination with a practice theory perspective was used to articulate crucial aspects related to understanding the dynamics of value co-formation for elaborative and illustrative purposes.

The study contributes to service theory by conceptualizing as follows: a typology consisting of nine different configurations of practice elements (within and between such elements) and eight possible directions that value formation can take, suggesting a theory that explains value co-creation, value co-destruction and mixed cases.

Although the findings have been developed in a specific empirical context, they articulate a conceptualization applicable to many other service and marketing value co-formation settings.

The typologies are conceptual tools to be used in identifying and measuring the alignment/misalignment of practice elements in complex organizations. The empirical findings uncover service problems faced by disabled customers.

The suggested typologies can guide research and practitioners in understanding and analysing value co-formation mechanisms in complex service settings.

The purpose of this paper is to extend current discussions of value creation and propose a customer dominant value perspective. The point of origin in a customer‐dominant marketing logic (C‐D logic) is the customer, rather than the service provider, interaction or the system. The focus is shifted from the company's service processes involving the customer, to the customer's multi‐contextual value formation, involving the company.

Value formation is contrasted to earlier views on the company's role in value creation in a conceptual analysis focusing on five central aspects. Implications of the proposed characteristics of value formation compared to earlier approaches are put forward.

The paper highlights earlier hidden aspects on the role of a service for the customer. It is proposed that value is not always an active process of creation; instead, value is embedded and formed in the highly dynamic and multi‐contextual reality and life of the customer. This leads to a need to look beyond the line of visibility focused on visible customer‐company interactions, to the invisible and mental life of the customer. From this follows a need to extend the temporal scope, from exchange and use even further to accumulated experiences in the customer's life and ecosystem.

This paper is conceptual. It discusses and presents a customer‐dominant value perspective and suggests implications for empirical research and practice.

Awareness of the mechanism of the customer value formation process provides companies with new insight on the service strategy, service design and new service innovations.

The paper contributes by extending the value construct through a new customer dominant value perspective, recognizing value as multi‐contextual and dynamic based on customers' life and ecosystem. The findings mark out new avenues for future research.

This paper aims to analyze the conditions for co-creation in a non-commercial context. The particular aim is to show how a co-creative activity is framed for the participants and the consequences of the frames for the values that are co-created in the process.

Goffman’s frame analysis is applied to investigate how co-creation is used as a marketing strategy where an art event is used as an engagement platform to involve citizens in creating visions for an urban renewal area. It is a qualitative study based on observations.

The taken-for-granted ideas of the active and creative consumer along with the focus in marketing research on the positive values achieved in a co-creative process are problematic in a public context. An unreflexive use of a co-creative strategy in a non-commercial setting and using art as an engagement platform, in combination with insufficient communication about the new framings, result in no-creation of value or even co-destruction of value.

Unclear definition of the situation for co-creation results in confusion about how to interact and how to create value. Such an outcome is highly problematic for a public organization. It is of major importance that citizens can identify and understand the type of activity. The authors argue that communication in well-defined phases of an event can facilitate desired acts of co-creation.

Value co-creation theory has been transferred between contexts, but there are few studies of what the transfer means in terms of consumer abilities to take part in the value creation process and its rules of engagement. This study demonstrates the difficulties of moving from theory to practice when the context changes from a commercial to a public participatory one. This opens for new research venues in value co-creation and marketing theory.

Fundraising plays a critical role in the success of non-profit organizations (hereafter NPOs). This study aims to propose to analyze fundraising from a service-dominant logic, specifically from a service ecosystem approach, to understand the different entities and interactions involved in this activity, as well as the types of value that emerge from them.

A cross-case study was developed using three health-care Brazilian NPOs. Data collection methods were performed to build each case, including observation of NPOs’ telemarketing staff interaction with donors and long interviews with their marketing managers. Data analysis involved applying the service ecosystem framework to each NPO and contrasting them.

First, the findings revealed the way in which religious, political and child-rearing institutions integrate into citizenship ideals that permeate both NPOs’ and donors’ attitudes and behaviors. Second, five different fundraising interactions (emotional, religious, political, influencer and empathetic) in which NPOs and donors pool their resources to co-create value are presented. Third, how the outcomes of fundraising interactions manifest for NPOs in the form of financial (money and time) and social value (social legitimation) and for teleworkers and donors in the form of emotional value (joy and relatedness) are identified.

This paper used a service ecosystem approach to analyze a new service context “fundraising,” which has been scarcely discussed in the literature. The findings show how macro-level institutions work together for fundraising. Five different fundraising interactions were identified, linking the communication with the service experience literature. Finally, the findings identify fundraising’s different value outcomes extending traditional approaches for evaluating this activity.

Access to services for consumers with disabilities (CwD) has gained increased attention from researchers and service providers in recent years. Consequently, ensuring that services are designed and maintained in a manner that is more inclusive and accessible to CwD has become imperative. However, academic literature is fragmented and thus, this study aims to provide a state-of-the-art synthesis for further theoretical development.

This study reviews 77 relevant articles in the domain using a multidisciplinary review following the PRISMA protocol, and a thematic analysis was conducted.

The study thoroughly synthesizes the theories, contexts and methods used in the extant literature. Next, the study presents a new theoretical framework with four broader dimensions: beyond regulations, towards accessibility, value co-creation, inclusion of CwD and role of stakeholders. Furthermore, it highlights the related sub-dimensions attributed to the service design stages (planning, usage and post-usage). Based on this, the study offers critical avenues for future research using the Double Diamond framework.

The study contributes significantly to service design literature for CwD and transformative service research by developing a new consolidated theoretical framework. The findings should direct service providers towards better service designs in related fields. Socially, the study has implications for promoting accessibility and inclusion for CwD, while providing them the freedom of choice.

This paper aims to identify how, in contrast to a provider-oriented stance where customer value is conceptualised as being controlled by the provider, customer value is formed for business customers beyond what is visible to the provider.

This paper builds on the primacy of the customer. Customer-dominant logic (CDL) is used as the conceptual underpinning, meaning that the customer, rather than the service provider or the service system, is at the centre. A case study was conducted with seven key users from three customer companies of an information and communications technology (ICT) provider of in-house services. The study used a micro-social level focus by capturing customers’ experiences of those activities where value in use is formed.

The findings indicate that value formation is not related only to direct service interactions and furthermore substantially takes place beyond a service provider’s visibility line. Hence, value formation is in large part hidden for the service provider because it is embedded in customers’ activities and experiences.

Although the study is limited to one case concerning ICT services, these findings may apply to other service businesses, in particular to knowledge-intensive outsourcing businesses.

Understanding a customer’s value formation from the customer’s point of view is the key to service development for any business service provider.

Applying a CDL approach, the authors deepen the understanding of customer value formation as it emerges in customer activities. The study provides detailed insight into business customers’ value formation processes. The study’s findings challenge the current emphasis on interactions and co-creation and instead demonstrate the importance of understanding customer logics and contexts.

This paper aims to conceptualise and characterise brand systems and outline propositions and research avenues to advance the systems’ view of branding.

A conceptual synthesis approach is adopted to integrate the extant branding research perspectives. The conceptual framework is grounded in the theoretical foundation of marketing systems theory.

The conceptual framework delineates brand inputs, throughputs, outcomes and feedback effects within a brand system. It configures the complexity and dynamics of brand value formation among brand actors within the branding environment.

This paper contributes to systems thinking in branding and brand value co-creation research. It extends marketing systems theory into the branding context and provides research directions for exploring the structural and functional configurations, cause–consequence processes and outcome concerns of brand value formation.

This conceptual framework informs brand development, management and regulation at a macro level. Managers can apply the brand system concept to identify and manage conflicting expectations of brand actors and alleviate adverse brand outcomes such as negative brand externalities, enhancing overall brand system health and societal value.

This research expands the scope of brand actor agency and identifies the likelihood of disproportionate brand outcomes. It provides methodological guidelines for analysis and intervention in brand systems.

Although a dominant marketing concept, value co-creation (VCC) is not without controversy. Inspired by value co-destruction (VCD), the purpose of this paper is to review the scattered literature on the uncertainties in collaborative value formation, synthesising contingency factors of value outcomes in VCC.

The paper is based on an examination of 84 peer-reviewed journal articles. Recognising the drawbacks of the macroscopic abstraction in existing the VCC literature, the authors adopt a zooming-in approach to identify distinct patterns of contingency factors in the collaborative value-formation process.

From a macro-social perspective, VCC may connote a sense of exploitation of “consumers” and a need for consumer control of “producers”, impeding harmonious value formation. Zooming into actor-to-actor interactions, the collaborative relationship is found to be a source of uncertainties in value formation, which is further complicated by differences in the knowledge intensities of services. Finally, reviewing the individual consumer reveals a most nuanced picture that demonstrates heterogeneities of consumers’ VCC involvement and complexities in their perceptions and behaviours. Five propositions and a contingency framework are proposed.

Six value formation mechanisms are proposed based on interconnected and multi-level perspectives, providing implications for managers and future researchers.

This paper contributes to rebalancing VCC research by synthesising insights on the potential contingencies, which are relatively under-explored yet vital to keep the controversy alive and relevant, and re-invigorating business processes.