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This paper aims to analyze the well-being consequences of value co-creation activities at an ecosystem level, focusing specifically on the micro and meso levels. This study is performed in a retail ecosystem, a highly relevant context where individuals spend a considerable amount of time and resources, but where well-being is usually not deemed as a relevant outcome.

The investigation analyzes qualitative data from micro and meso level actors of a retail ecosystem. At the micro-level, in-depth interviews performed with customers, employees and suppliers were assessed. The meso level analysis included most of the actors embedded in the retail ecosystem: employees’ headquarters, suppliers’ headquarters, nearby competitors, family, other retail outlets and external employees.

This study is one of the first in the transformative service research area to analyze well-being from a retail ecosystem perspective. Hence, this analysis broadens the literature on transformative service by considering supermarket retailing, an everyday service context that is not assumed to generate well-being outcomes. Results reveal that actors who spend more time or have fewer options available for them in the retail ecosystem see their well-being deeply affected. It also extends the conceptualization of value co-creation to a retail ecosystem, a specific ecosystem, which differs from previous studies that focus mostly on health-care ecosystems.

Although useful to understand new insights, a limitation of this investigation is that it is based upon a single qualitative study.

The study portrays how activities happening within a business context have consequences beyond traditional measures such as loyalty or turn-over. It proposes specific value co-creation actions to be performed by employees, suppliers and customers to promote positive well-being consequences for the micro and meso level retail ecosystem.

Retail ecosystems are usually not deemed as relevant when trying to understand societal well-being outcomes. This study empirically depicts that all services, even the ones without transformative goals, need to be aware of the impact they have on societal well-being.

This paper provides a novel conceptualization of well-being effects in a retail ecosystem. Specifically, this is the first study in the transformative service research literature to identify the micro and meso level well-being consequences of value co-creation activities within a retail ecosystem.

Digitalization has transformed several industries during the past two decades. In this paper the authors focus on the retail sector, where new business models help retailers and suppliers meet the ever changing and demanding needs of retail shoppers. One example of this business model innovation is multi-sided digital platforms, which have become popular as they connect consumers with suppliers from around the world with a large ecosystem to support the retail platform. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of how multi-sided digital platforms are transforming the retail exchange logic and assess the implications and impact of these platform-based businesses on the retail sector, especially for business managers and consumers.

In this paper, the authors employ literature review, conceptual analysis and qualitative case study methodology. The authors provide an overview of how the platform economy is affecting the retail sector through the illustration of four digital multi-sided platforms: Alibaba Group, Amazon.com, eBay and Rakuten Group, and what differentiates them from incumbent business models in retailing.

The findings suggest that platforms transform the transaction logic of retailing as they simply intermediate transactions between buyers and suppliers rather than handling the entire supply and logistics chain themselves. The authors highlight the role of consumer understanding and Big Data as one example of how multi-sided digital platforms differentiate from their non-platform competitors.

The paper highlights how incumbent retailers can compete against new forms of business, such as digital platforms, and the authors demonstrate some of the managerial capabilities needed to remain relevant amidst this new digital competition.

Very little empirical studies in marketing and retail literature have focused on multi-sided digital platforms and their business models. The present study fills this gap with an overview of how multi-sided digital platforms transform the retail sector.

This paper aims to examine Borders response to business model innovation (BMI) by Amazon in the bookselling industry. The case illuminates potential causes for protracted periods of organizational unlearning, explaining why organizational unlearning, although beneficial in many documented cases, can also be insufficient to prevent failure.

Archival data are used to study Borders’s historical evolution from 1995 to its 2011 bankruptcy. Theoretical inferences are drawn from this case to shed light on the process of organizational unlearning.

Borders failed because its top managers were unable to adjust its traditionalist superstore identity to respond in an adequate manner to the changes in their environment. Instead, the company went through protracted phases of weathering the storm, denial and unlearning, resulting in bankruptcy. This extreme case of failure explains why sometimes, organizational unlearning might be insufficient, resulting in organizational demise rather than renewal.

A longitudinal study of an extreme case allows the author to build links between the research on organizational unlearning and the scholarship on organizational identity.

Organizations may survive longer if their top managers engage in the process of organizational identity change in response to BMI in their industry. The article proposes a few actions that organizations might usefully take to react to BMI before it is too late.

Better understanding of failure may enable preventive behavior.

This article explains how organizational identity prevents learning the right things and augments the dangers organizations face during unlearning.

Retail organizations that consider a service ecosystems view of sustainability focused on transformation have the potential to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals, business and society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the transformative nature of sustainable retail fashion organizations and their impact on wellbeing within a sustainable retail service ecosystem.

A qualitative in-depth case study research design was implemented using four sustainable fashion brands. Data were collected from multiple sources including secondary data from company websites and publicly available reports and interviews with founders and/or high-ranking managers within the organization.

Three overarching themes critical to transformation in sustainable retail service ecosystems were identified: (1) embedded core purpose or ethos, (2) relevance of fit and (3) breadth and depth of message. Corresponding wellbeing elements were found within the three themes – community and society wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, business strategy wellbeing, consumer wellbeing, leadership wellbeing, employee wellbeing, stakeholder and value chain wellbeing and brand wellbeing.

Future research offers an important opportunity to further explore the relationships between sustainability, TSR and wellbeing in other service contexts.

The paper contributes to transformative service research literature by conceptualizing a sustainable retail service wellbeing ecosystem framework.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the role of market-based transformative service initiatives (TSIs) during the refugee crisis and shed light on how such TSIs increase inclusion of refugees in service systems by using market forces while creating broader benefits for service organizations themselves.

This paper uses the case of the World Food Program’s (WFP) Dalili smartphone application targeting Syrian refugees in the context of Lebanon. A mixed-methods approach, including in-depth interviews with the retail managers of the local supermarkets and statistical cross- and intra-regional analysis on the retailing mix elements of the local supermarkets was adopted for the empirical investigation.

The results show that the WFP’s Dalili TSI increases service inclusion of refugees by facilitating their access to the essential food services easier and at affordable prices and helps them integrate into the host community. Furthermore, such market-based TSIs were shown to have broader benefits for other stakeholders in the food retail ecosystem including retailers and nonrefugee shoppers as they are successful in improving the retailing management standards of the participating supermarkets by decreasing the average retail price of the merchandise, increasing their variety and assortment, increasing promotional offers and improving the customer service level.

This research fills the gap in the literature for empirical investigation on the impact mechanism of market-based TSIs on service inclusion and well-being of refugees. In contrast to the majority of TSIs studied in the literature that are designed by governments or nonprofit organizations in the areas such as higher education, health care and humanitarian aids, this study focuses on the case of TSIs developed by supranational organizations using market forces in the food retail ecosystem. Furthermore, the findings suggest that TSIs could also benefit the service organizations that offer such initiatives.

The findings of this paper have implications for service organizations and policymakers and their ability to design effective market-based TSIs during the refugee crisis.

The studied case in the context of TSIs in the food retail ecosystem and the empirical approach used are academically novel. Moreover, focusing on the refugee crisis in the Middle East region is rather understudied in the service research literature.

This study aims to examine the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels in service ecosystems, analyzing the case of a tourist destination.

A questionnaire was designed based on previously validated scales. The questionnaire was distributed through the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. The survey yielded 1,476 valid responses for three types of destinations. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were performed to test the hypotheses.

Aggregate service experience and memorable customer experience (MCE) in service ecosystems are determined by customer experiences at a dyadic level. Service experience at the ecosystem level is formed from ordinary experiences at the actor level, while MCE is formed from extraordinary experiences at the dyadic level. The type of ecosystem moderates the relationships between the variables but does not alter the importance of each of them.

The relationship between the co-creation of customer experiences at different levels of service ecosystems (dyadic vs aggregate) is addressed. A relationship is established between the ordinary and extraordinary character of experiences and their memorability at the ecosystem level.

Suning Group launched Suning.com when its chain stores were developing at the highest speed, realizing the transformation to an Internet retailer. Suning continued to follow the growth strategy of “Technological transformation and Smart Services”, and was renamed Suning Commerce Co. Ltd. It launched a business model of “e-commerce + stores + retail service providers”. Riding on the brand new O2O business model, Suning is thinking and practicing from simple donation to actual implementation, from constructing public welfare network to extending CSR ecosystem in a bid to advance towards deeper and more extensive Internet economy, and to create greater social value.

The purpose of this paper is to address the effects of retail out-of-stocks from a service-dominant (S-D) logic view.

Conceptual, combining classic S-D logic research with recent research of S-D logic in supply chains, and applying this to out-of-stocks in a retail setting of fast-moving consumer goods.

The paper unveils out-of-stocks as emergent operant resources that alter and attenuate value creation across manufacturers, retailers, shoppers, users and their networks. The paper develops a model of value co-creation where manufacturer supply and shopper/user demand meet in the retailer ' s realm. Differentiating between shopper and user in a sequential model of value creation, it identifies the shopper as an active entity whose response to out-of-stocks redistributes value within the retail service ecosystem. An additional model is developed that illustrates the novel costs of an out-of-stock as uncovered by the S-D logic perspective, allowing retailers and manufacturers to align their interests in improving on-shelf availability.

Moving distribution thought and management towards a goal of service provision, this article suggests three logistics research possibilities: retailer-manufacturer misalignment, spatio-temporal supply-demand mismatch, and shopper-user interaction.

This article shows how the S-D perspective can bring previously misaligned incentives of supply chain actors into alignment. Previous goods-dominant research showed little common ground for manufacturers and retailers to jointly improve on-shelf availability. The S-D logic view demonstrates compelling rationale for both parties ' involvement.

The paper extends S-D logic literature by considering value attenuation through failures in physical distribution and logistics management, adding that non-availability causes operand resources to become operant and attenuate/redistribute value. The paper extends the out-of-stock literature by providing a theoretical foundation, and by showing the ecosystem effects of out-of-stocks.

The Chinese market represents an increasingly popular destination for wine firms and recent opportunities derive from the growth of e-commerce. The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of digital platforms on wine firms' internationalisation in China by adopting the service ecosystems approach.

The authors carried out a case study of Italian premium wine firms from the Valpolicella area by collecting 27 semi-structured interviews with key informants that operate at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of the internationalisation ecosystem. Italian wine firms were selected as the focus of the analysis, given the recent sales growth of their products in the Chinese market.

Results show that digital platforms hold a key role in the wine firms' internationalisation in China, intervening with resource integration mechanisms, alignment to the cultural context and mediating firms' digital presence in the market. The platformisation dynamics also reveal the existence of enablers and constraints in the firm internationalisation through digital platforms.

The authors aim to contribute to the marketing literature by analysing how digital platforms influence the wine firms' internationalisation in China through an original perspective, i.e. the service ecosystems lens.

The study adopts the service ecosystems approach to understand the internationalisation of wine firms in the Chinese market through digital platforms.

The world continues to grapple with grand challenges – climate change, pandemic, poverty, social injustice and diminishing resources – requiring mitigation if we are to focus on well-being and move towards a more sustainable future. Cultivating sustainable ecosystems offers a possible solution. The purpose of this paper is to understand how sustainable organizations at the meso level can nurture sustainable service ecosystems that provide the potential for greater well-being outcomes for individuals, business, society and the planet.

Case study data is gathered from 11 sustainable fashion organizations operating at the meso level within a complex ecosystem. The analysis includes interviews with founders and/or key managers and secondary information from company websites and publicly available reports.

The findings identify key value co-creation sustainable practices at the meso level that facilitate the function of the service ecosystem to create well-being outcomes. Value co-creation practices include – embedding a sustainable ethos; implementing sustainable strategies that embrace innovation, transparency and stakeholder collaboration; and incorporating sustainable communication practices that engage.

Encapsulating sustainability within macromarketing and service ecosystems enables the development of a sustainable service ecosystems framework that has the potential to offer enhanced well-being. Implications for marketing practice in terms of important factors that facilitate service-sustainable ecosystems to enhance well-being are considered.