Understanding the Relationship between Value Co-Creation Mechanism and Firm's Performance based on the Service-Dominant Logic

AIn the advanced - economy, the services industry hasbecome a dominant sector. Evidently, the services sector has grown at a much faster rate than any other. For instance, in such developed countries as the U.S., the proportion of the services sector in its GDP is greater than 75%. Even in the developing countries including India and China, the magnitude of the services sector in their GDPs is rapidly growing. The increasing dependence on service gives rise to new initiatives including service science and service-dominant logic. These new initiatives propose a new theoretical prism to promote the better understanding of the changing economic structure. From the new perspectives, service is no longer regarded as a transaction or exchange, but rather co-creation of value through the interaction among service users, providers, and other stakeholders including partners, external environments, and customer communities. The purpose of this study is the following. First, we review previous literature on service, service innovation, and service systems and integrate the studies based on service dominant logic. Second, we categorize the ten propositions of service dominant logic into conceptual propositions and the ones that are directly related to service provision. Conceptual propositions are left out to form the research model. With the selected propositions, we define the research constructs for this study. Third, we develop measurement items for the new service concepts including service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and convergence of service with product. We then propose a research model to explain the relationship among the factors that affect the value creation mechanism. Finally, we empirically investigate the effects of the factors on firm performance. Through the process of this research study, we want to show the value creation mechanism of service systems in which various participants in service provision interact with related parties in a joint effort to create values. To test the proposed hypotheses, we developed measurement items and distributed survey questionnaires to domestic companies. 500 survey questionnaires were distributed and 180 were returned among which 171 were usable. The results of the empirical test can be summarized as the following. First, service providers' network which is to help offer required services to customers is found to affect customer network, while it does not have a significant effect on value co-creation and product-service convergence. Second, customer network, on the other hand, appears to influence both value co-creation and product-service convergence. Third, value co-creation accomplished through the collaboration of service providers and customers is found to have a significant effect on both product-service convergence and firm performance. Finally, product-service convergence appears to affect firm performance. To interpret the results from the value creation mechanism perspective, service provider network well established to support customer network is found to have significant effect on customer network which in turn facilitates value co-creation in service provision and product-service convergence to lead to greater firm performance. The results have some enlightening implications for practitioners. If companies want to transform themselves into service-centered business enterprises, they have to consider the four factors suggested in this study: service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and product-service convergence. That is, companies becoming a service-oriented organization need to understand what the four factors are and how the factors interact with one another in their business context. They then may want to devise a better tool to analyze the value creation mechanism and apply the four factors to their own environment. This research study contributes to the literature in following ways. First, this study is one of the very first empirical studies on the service dominant logic as it has categorized the fundamental propositions into conceptual and empirically testable ones and tested the proposed hypotheses against the data collected through the survey method. Most of the propositions are found to work as Vargo and Lusch have suggested. Second, by providing a testable set of relationships among the research variables, this study may provide policy makers and decision makers with some theoretical grounds for their decision making on what to do with service innovation and management. Finally, this study incorporates the concepts of value co-creation through the interaction between customers and service providers into the proposed research model and empirically tests the validity of the concepts. The results of this study will help establish a value creation mechanism in the service-based economy, which can be used to develop and implement new service provision.

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