Search results

This paper aims to investigate how pharmacies communicate their customer value proposition (CVP) in a complex and multiple-stakeholder setting. More specifically, from the pharmacists’ perspective, the study analyzes how CVP is articulated in complex settings/offerings and among multiple stakeholders; and elucidates the communication gap among stakeholders of the CVP.

Two studies were conducted to examine how offerings are communicated throughout the value chain. Through six in-depth interviews, Study 1 aimed to analyze how pharmacies articulate CVP for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in a complex business-to-business-to-consumer setting. For Study 2, the data were collected from 113 French pharmacists to investigate the communication issues and to unveil the tools used to promote OTC drugs among the different stakeholders.

From the pharmacists’ perspective, the longer the chain, the more complex the efficiency of the CVP. This study conceives a new and adapted CVP as iterative and cumulative. This paper also highlights how value is distributed across the customer relationship in a complex and regulated industry. The findings feature a reciprocal perspective of CVP between the pharmaceutical labs and their direct/indirect customers. Final customers aim at creating a reciprocal approach with the different stakeholders. Pharmacists use a unidirectional perspective of CVP with their direct customers (patients/final customers).

The study contributes to a better understanding of the CVP in complex industries characterized by a chain of value distributed among multiple stakeholders (i.e. business-to-consumer and business-to-business). The article also enriches past research that analyzed the way firms communicate their offerings from a CVP perspective.

This paper aims to examine the notion of value propositions (promises of reciprocal value between service providers and their customers), value‐in‐exchange and value‐in‐use, all within the conceptual context of service‐dominant (S‐D) logic.

Responding to calls in the recent literature for an academic critique of S‐D logic, its key constructs, and its application in marketing situations of varying complexity, the paper presents a conceptual analysis of the determinants of value emphasis in value propositions from the S‐D perspective.

Four guiding principles are derived from a rigorous analysis of the relevant literatures. Ways are discussed in which firms might achieve greater flexibility in designing their market offerings, and thus manage different customer segments using different value propositions. The general conclusion is that the ability to communicate a firm's value propositions strategically and effectively is a new area for the development of competence at the core of competitive advantage.

The findings pave the way for empirical research into the dynamics of value propositions. Since the main focus of the conceptual framework is on the customer‐provider dyad, future studies should broaden coverage to multilateral settings and networked environments.

Factors that determine the relative emphasis in value propositions between value‐in‐exchange and value‐in‐use are discussed, and the management implications derived from each of the four principles identified.

The paper elaborates the application of S‐D logic in marketing by investigating the determinants of relative emphasis of value propositions.

Customer value creation is dependent on a firm’s capacity to fulfil its brand promises and value propositions. The purpose of this paper is to explore frontline employees’ (FLEs’) motivation to align with value propositions.

The paper explores FLEs’ motivation to align with a firm’s value propositions as operationalised brand promises. A longitudinal, three-phase case study was conducted on a business-to-business company in the building and technical trade sector.

This study reveals factors that foster and weaken employees’ motivation to align with a firm’s brand promises and value propositions. The findings show that co-activity and authentic, practice-driven promises and value propositions foster FLEs’ motivation to uphold brand promises and value propositions, whereas an objectifying stance and power struggle weaken their motivation.

The study indicates that a bottom-up approach to strategising is needed and that FLE is to be engaged in traditional managerial domains, such as in developing value propositions. By creating space and agency for FLE in the strategising process, their motivation to align with value propositions is fostered. Four motivational modes are suggested to support bottom-up strategising.

The paper is unique in its focus on FLEs’ motivation. Developing value propositions traditionally falls within the domain of management strategising, while employees are ascribed the role of enactment. Contrary to the established norm, this paper highlights employees’ active role in strategising and developing value propositions.

The value proposition concept and the stakeholder perspective have received relatively little attention within Service‐Dominant (S‐D) logic. This paper sets out to explore value propositions in the context of S‐D logic, within the multiple stakeholder domains that form part of a marketing system. Its purpose is to identify how use of the value proposition concept, in this broader context, provides new insight into value creation within a value network.

This paper explores the development of value propositions in key stakeholder market domains. A five‐step process is developed for identifying key stakeholders and co‐creating value propositions for them within a marketing system.

Value propositions have a key role in co‐creation of value between stakeholders. The development of value propositions in multiple stakeholder domains can provide an important mechanism for aligning value within a marketing system.

Stakeholder value propositions provide enhanced opportunities for value co‐creation and can assist managers in aligning value and stabilizing relationships within an organization's value network.

This paper considers a broader view of value through creation of value propositions for key stakeholders. An iterative framework is proposed that couples the stakeholder concept and value co‐creation.

Purpose – The aim is to introduce a sociological perspective on resource integration and value co-creation into service research using a service systems approach.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual and a case study of the service system a Telecom Equipment and Service Provider is embedded in is reported.

Findings – The service practice of the service system is framed by social structures of signification, legitimation, and domination. However, the practice is also independent of the structures since it is embedded in and shapes the structural realm.

Research implications and limitations – Drawing on structuration and practice theory, the chapter offers a new framework describing how social and service structures and practices can inform and reveal mechanisms of service system dynamics. Based on the framework, three propositions are developed focusing on the mechanisms of resource integration and value co-creation. The implications need to be generalized in future research by studying other empirical contexts.

Practical implications – The chapter provides some tentative guidelines on how organizations can design service systems that enable and support customers and other actors in their resource integration and value co-creation processes by paying attention to social structures and forces and not only resources as such.

Originality – The chapter explicates how social structures have implications for value co-creation and resource integration in service system. It makes systematic use of structuration and practice theory to understand the social dimensions of service systems. A distinction between intended and realized resource integration is made.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what value dimensions and related value components are highlighted in the value proposition of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), both at the relationship and project levels, how value propositions can differ between new and established customer relationships, and finally what is characteristic to the evolution of value proposition in the KIBS context.

This study uses a comparative, qualitative multiple case study method.

The aim is to offer a comprehensive picture of the variety of value components in KIBS relationships, likewise, how the nature and composition of value proposition changes as a relationship evolves from conducting a single project toward a more established customer relationship. Individual experts seem to possess a crucial role in that development.

This study contributes theoretically by providing insights into the current literature on core dimensions and components of value propositions in this specific context, and differences there can be between new and established customer relationships. The study also offers much-needed, context-specific knowledge of knowledge-intensive services for managers. Empirically, these findings reflect the perspectives of both the service provider and four of its customers, ensuring a multi-sided description of the phenomenon.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to analyse the implications generated by a service perspective.

A conceptual analysis of two approaches to understanding service perspectives, service logic (SL) and service-dominant logic (SDL), reveals direct and indirect marketing implications.

The SDL is based on a metaphorical view of co-creation and value co-creation, in which the firm, customers and other actors participate in the process that leads to value for customers. The approach is firm-driven; the service provider drives value creation. The managerial implications are not service perspective-based, and co-creation may be imprisoned by its metaphor. In contrast, SL takes an analytical approach, with co-creation concepts that can significantly reinvent marketing from a service perspective. Value gets created in customer processes, and value creation is customer driven. Ten managerial SL principles derived from these analyses offer theoretical and practical conclusions with the potential to reinvent marketing.

The SDL can direct researchers’ and managers’ views towards complex value-generation processes. The SL can analyse this process on a managerial level, to derive customer-centric, service perspective-based opportunities to reinvent marketing.

The analysis and principles help marketing break free from offering only value propositions and become an organisation-wide responsibility. Firms must organise service-influenced marketing and create a customer focus among all employees, beyond conventional marketing.

A service perspective on business has key managerial implications and enables researchers and managers to find new, customer-centric, service-influenced marketing approaches.

The purpose of this study is to explore polygamous program loyalty in hotel loyalty programs and the relationship between members’ behavioral loyalty and their perceptions of the program effectiveness.

Descriptive statistics, discriminant analysis, ordinary least square regression and one-way ANOVA methods.

This study suggests that the flexibility to purchase points in a loyalty program is significantly associated with the polygamous program loyalty. Members will stay in only one program if they perceive such flexibility. Although members tend to emphasize purchasing accommodation from the loyalty programs’ hotels, they do not necessarily advocate or pay price premiums for the brand. Compared with basic members, elite members exhibit higher levels of loyalty behaviors in general, but not in terms of paying price premiums.

The results suggest that how customers value a loyalty program can differentiate the number of membership(s) they have. Increasing the flexibility of point purchase in hotel loyalty programs encourages customers to stay in only one program. With a majority of the participants in the study being senior travelers, the results and implications should be generalized only in the senior market. A larger and more diverse sample is recommended for future research.

If loyalty programs seek to keep members from joining other loyalty programs, they should increase members’ likelihood to achieve their expected benefits such as increased flexibility of point purchase. In addition, loyalty programs should encourage, recognize and incentivize members’ reciprocal behaviors based on the norm of reciprocity to build a reciprocal chain in loyalty programs. However, in seeking sustained loyal behavior, loyalty programs need to demonstrate value beyond transactional rewards.

This paper explores the reason why customers join multiple loyalty programs (i.e. polygamous program loyalty) and identifies a broken reciprocity link in hotel loyalty programs. Many members primarily focus on the utilities of loyalty programs rather than contributing back to the program; therefore, the norm of reciprocity is suggested to improve loyalty program effectiveness.

Purpose – The purpose of this essay is to explore further the concept of value cocreation from a service-ecosystems view, by considering the importance of networks and the configuration of relationships and resources in markets.

Methodology/approach – We use a conceptual approach to extend a service-dominant (S-D) logic, ecosystems view of value cocreation by drawing on the literature regarding networks in marketing and related research.

Findings – A service-ecosystems approach to cocreating value-in-context is proposed, which points toward networks as mediating factors in value cocreation because they influence the ability to access, adapt, and integrate resources by establishing exchange relationships and shaping the social contexts through which value is experienced.

Research implications – This research suggests that value cocreation is a complex and multidimensional process that is best studied in the context of dynamic networks or ecosystems of service exchange.

Practical implications – This research suggests that networks mediate value cocreation, and thus, firms should consider the configurations of relationships and resources to develop more compelling value propositions.

Social implications – This research draws on the idea that exchange relationships are embedded within society and suggests that processes of value cocreation not only draw on but also contribute to the social contexts that frame market exchange.

Originality/value of essay – This research extends the value cocreation and S-D logic literature by exploring the role of networks in service ecosystems. In this framework, networks are mediators of value cocreation because they enable access to resources and help to (re)shape social contexts through which value is derived.