Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: As the distinction in roles of production by suppliers and consumption by customers become blurred, concomitantly there is increasing interest to understand the process of \nhow value is co-created through interaction in business relationships. In this connection and in the context of larger customers and small and medium-sized suppliers’ (SMEs) dyad, this study identifies the areas of collaboration, how value is co-created and the respective co-created value. This is based on five in-depth case studies (business relationships) drawn from the UK organic food sector. Theoretically, the investigation is \ngrounded on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group’s interaction approach, given its assumptions. The larger customers and SME suppliers were found to collaborate \nin a wide range of areas including innovation, corporate social responsibility, inter-linked technical systems, planning, co-evaluation and interactive learning. Considering the value co-creation practices as representing how value is co-created, this occurred respectively in \nthe form of, for example: exchanging ideas on product development; facilitating and sponsoring school children to visit farms; joint technical systems; consultations in the \ndevelopment of business plans; co-evaluating processes and staff; and internships. The collaboration led to co-creation of monetary and non-monetary values such as revenue \nand reputation respectively. Different collaborative areas led to the co-creation of various types of value and this underscores the potential of larger customer-SME supplier \nrelationships and also has implications in resource allocation. The identified value cocreation phenomenon reveals the need to extend the IMP interaction approach by \nentrenching the concept of value co-creation such that the framework not only shows exchange but also value co-creation.
Author: Isaac K. Ngugi
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W844800056