Abstract
In response to recent calls for deeper understanding of value co-creation between multiple actors, this article explores co-creation in collective consumption contexts. These are defined as settings within which multiple consumers, and optionally multiple other actors such as service personnel, are co-present (physically and/or virtually) and coordinate with one another during product/service consumption. To understand co-creation in such contexts, this article argues for an integration of practice-based and experience-based perspectives, because while collective coordination occurs via social practices, the value that results is by definition an individual experience. By studying an orchestral music context in which multiple consumers and service providers participate, the authors develop a framework dialectically relating co-creation practices to value. Four variables emerge influencing the relationship between co-creation practices and value: role rigidity, consumer heterogeneity conflict, participation access, and signposting. Value can be constrained by role rigidity and by consumer heterogeneity conflict between consumers of differing competence; mitigating this requires that service providers pay attention to participation access and signposting (guiding consumers to select and combine practices in line with their skills and competences). Overall, the findings show how practices shape not just coordination among consumers, but also social learning. Implications for service organizations include how to facilitate social learning between novices and experts so as to optimize value for all.
Keywords
Much of the early work on how service creates value focused on the supplier’s role through the notion of service quality. Over the last 20 years, the complementary role of the customer in value co-creation has been an increasing focus (Payne, Storbacka, and Frow 2008; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Vargo and Lusch 2004). However, recent literature on service ecosystems (Vargo and Lusch 2011) and service logic (Grönroos and Voima 2013) emphasizes that the actors who co-create value extend beyond the supplier-customer dyad. Notably, in many settings—from spectator sports and choral singing to slimming clubs and orienteering—consumers coordinate with their peers, as well as with others such as service personnel.
We term such a setting a “collective consumption context” which, adapting Närvänen, Gummesson, and Kuusela (2014) and Figueiredo and Scaraboto (2016), we define as a setting within which multiple consumers, and optionally multiple other actors such as service personnel, are co-present (physically and/or virtually) and coordinate with one another during product/service consumption. The increasing range of such contexts in the service landscape includes not just out-of-home activities such as martial arts and continuing education but also such online-enabled activities in the home as multiplayer gaming and peer-to-peer IT support.
The profusion of such collective consumption contexts renders them important to managers in their own right. Furthermore, innovations that create value by influencing how consumers coordinate can be observed in numerous sectors. Sites such as meetup.com, for example, help consumers coordinate in the organization of social events. Private and public organizations use face-to-face and online open innovation to improve everything from holidays to government policy (e.g., globescan.com). Time banking, a reciprocity-based time-trading system, is used by local authorities to assemble willing teams for community service. Practitioners and scholars alike have therefore called for a better understanding of how value co-creation works in such multi-actor settings. A National Science Foundation consultation of service practitioners (Maglio, Kwan, and Spohrer 2015, p. 7) concluded that in service systems from manufacturing and information technology to cities, “the key problem…is in understanding the role of people,” because “all the actions and interactions [between people] cannot be anticipated beforehand.”
In this task, a key issue is how multiple consumers coordinate with each other and with any other actors present. In a simpler supplier-customer dyad, coordination is generally conceived as occurring through customer, supplier, and joint processes which are primarily defined by the supplier (Payne, Storbacka, and Frow 2008). How coordination occurs among multiple actors, though, is an important research challenge according to a worldwide consultation of service researchers and practitioners (Ostrom et al. 2015, p. 147): “The most highly rated subtopics [for research] reveal a consistent underlying theme that amounts to a call for research on coordination mechanisms for tackling interdependencies among actors…in value co-creation.” This matters to practitioners because they wish to optimize their role in the “portfolios of coordinating mechanisms” needed to create value for consumers.
Practice theory is well suited to the study of how consumers and others coordinate in value co-creation since, while practice approaches vary (Nicolini 2013), they share a focus on coordinated patterns of social action (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012). Practices embody not just patterns of collective behavior but also the socially determined meanings attached to them (Akaka, Vargo, and Schau 2015); practices therefore bring sociocultural context into the study of value co-creation.
However, the sole use of a practice-based perspective fails to fully illuminate the individual experience of the collective—the heterogeneous experiences of individuals that are central to the concept of value (Hartmann, Wiertz, and Arnould 2015; Helkkula, Kelleher, and Pihlstrom 2012). Within the experience-based perspective on value co-creation, value is “uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary” and is “idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual and meaning-laden” (Vargo and Lusch 2008, p. 7); however, this work remains largely conceptual, with a paucity of empirical studies (Macdonald, Kleinaltenkamp, and Wilson 2016). This leaves service practitioners unclear on quite what this value is, as well as how to facilitate its co-creation. Maglio, Kwan, and Spohrer’s (2015, p. 14) consultation of service practitioners asked: “How should value be defined and specified?” and “How is value multi-dimensional?” Whereas, their consultation found, scholars assume that value “is known to the service actors and guides their decision making,” practitioners report that it remains “understood imprecisely by those who pursue it” (Badinelli 2014, p. 1). Furthermore, how value for individuals arises from social practices has yet to receive sustained attention. Wilden et al. (2017, p. 55), among others, ask: “How can we study different levels of value and context simultaneously?”
We therefore argue that neither the experience-based nor the practice-based perspective alone adequately describes value co-creation in collective consumption contexts. In exploring our research question, “How does value emerge from value co-creation practices in collective consumption contexts?”, we posit that both individual variations in value and the collective practice performances of the various actors must be considered. Our first aim, therefore, is to synthesize experience-based and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation to scrutinize their interplay. Our second aim is to extend this synthesis empirically by examining value co-creation in a collective consumption context, namely live orchestral music.
This article thus makes three contributions that deepen the understanding of value co-creation in collective consumption contexts. First, we propose a theoretical integration of experience-based and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation, to better understand how value for individuals arises from coordinated collective practices. We thereby contribute to bridging the micro-level (individual actor engagement) and the meso-level (sets of actors and resources) perspectives on value co-creation (Storbacka et al. 2016), as called for by Meynhardt, Chandler, and Strathoff (2016), Vargo and Lusch (2011), and Figueiredo and Scaraboto (2016), among others. Second, in applying this integrated perspective, we identify four variables influencing the two-way relationship between co-creation practices and value: role rigidity, consumer heterogeneity conflict, participation access, and signposting. These variables show how differences in the prior learning of consumers are crucial to value for both novices and experts and suggest how service providers can best handle this consumer heterogeneity. Broadly, value can be constrained by role rigidity and consumer heterogeneity conflict; mitigating this requires service providers to pay attention to participation access and signposting. Third, we derive typologies of practices and value in a collective consumption context, extending previous typologies. Novel practices termed “reaching out” and “guided mentoring” explicate how actors learn from each other. One of the novel value categories, social value, helps to explain why expert actors are happy to help novices with this social learning. The other, somatic value, relates to the embodied nature of all social practices; while its salience in other contexts is likely to vary, the co-presence of other consumers is known to heighten affect and may thus emphasize this value category. Overall, the findings show how consumers coordinate not just in their core consumption activities but also in social learning and suggest how service providers can ensure that these practices create value for novice and expert consumers alike.
After defining value co-creation and collective consumption contexts, we compare experience- and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation and propose an integrated perspective. We then describe our empirical work that derives an integrated practice-value framework. We conclude with theoretical contributions and recommendations for practitioners.
Value Co-Creation in Collective Consumption Contexts
The Value Co-Creation Concept
The involvement of actors other than the firm in generating value has led to the term “value co-creation” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). Vargo and Lusch (2004) argue that because the customer’s use activities are necessary for value to emerge, the customer and not just the firm create value; in this sense, value is always co-created. Payne, Storbacka, and Frow (2008) propose several procedures through which this occurs. Others in the service logic stream (Grönroos and Gummerus 2014) see this use of the term “co-creation” as tautological; however, there is wider agreement that where other actors such as consumers are present, it is reasonable to describe value as co-created. For example, McColl-Kennedy et al. (2012) and Sweeney, Danaher, and McColl-Kennedy (2015) examine the role of customer-to-customer interactions as well as interactions with third parties in health service co-creation; however, with some such notable exceptions (Colm, Ordanini, and Parasuraman 2017), customer-to-customer interaction remains poorly explored empirically (Ostrom et al. 2015), as do the means by which customers co-create value with multiple organizations and service employees (Moeller et al. 2013).
While conceptions of value co-creation have yet to stabilize (Alves, Fernandes, and Raposo 2015), a definition of value co-creation consistent with much existing research is participation by the customer and optionally other actors—such as other customers, service personnel, and other organizations—in practices through which value emerges. (We will define “practices” and “value” later.) Not all of these actors will be present in every context; we therefore next review the concept of collective consumption contexts which form our scope.
Collective Consumption Contexts
Our particular focus is the subset of consumption contexts where multiple consumers, and optionally multiple other actors such as service personnel, are co-present (physically and/or virtually) and coordinate with one another. We term these “collective consumption contexts.” The same service ecosystem might have some consumption contexts that meet this definition and others that do not. In health care, for example, a telephone or online consultation with a doctor does not involve co-present consumers (unless a family member is joining in); a day visit to hospital typically involves a fair degree of co-presence but little coordination among consumers, who mainly coordinate directly with health professionals; by contrast, in an online support group for people with a long-term medical condition, several members might hold a live chat to advise each other (Keeling, Laing, and De Ruyter 2017; McColl-Kennedy et al. 2012), exhibiting both co-presence and coordination. The individual experience of co-presence in settings where little coordination among customers occurs, such as the hospital visit or a shopping center, has been the subject of a number of studies (e.g., Ng 2003; Sherbourne and Steward 1991). For example, co-present consumers may still influence each other through spatial and behavioral spillovers from their primarily independent actions (Colm, Ordanini, and Parasuraman 2017). A next step that has received less attention is the study of how coordination among co-present consumers and other actors takes place: “consideration of the collective dimension of experience has rarely gone beyond the simple concurrent presence of several people” (Caru and Cova 2015, p. 278) to understand the “aggregation of participants’ efforts to achieve common or compatible goals” (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016, p. 510). Such collective consumption contexts vary in several dimensions:
First, whether multiple employees or just multiple consumers are co-present (Colm, Ordanini, and Parasuraman 2017). To return to the health-care example, a patient support group may also interact with medical professionals (e.g., patientslikeme.com) or it may involve only the patients themselves (e.g., alcoholics anonymous). The latter context relates to Grönroos and Gummerus’s (2014, p. 208) notion of social value co-creation, where consumers coordinate with each other (or, in their definition, with other individuals in their ecosystem). In the former case, value co-creation also occurs in the provider-customer “joint sphere” (Grönroos and Voima 2013).
Second, the extent to which practices are provider-led versus consumer-led (Caru and Cova 2015). As an example of the provider-led end of this continuum, children at Legoland theme parks interact in such group activities as driving toy cars, but by framing this as a driving school, theme park staff are legitimately able to guide the children in how to coordinate and avoid crashing into each other. Caru and Cova (2015) cite as an example of consumer-led coordination the Loggionisti subculture at Milan’s La Scala Opera. This fiercely independent group of regular opera-goers can make or break a show at their whim. Their collective view emerges clearly from their cheers or boos, but how they coordinate is outside the provider’s control. In all but the extreme provider-led end of this continuum, the question remains as to how this coordination among consumers occurs.
Third, the extent to which coordination of actors is enabled by technology. For example, participants in some multiplayer online games have quite constrained ways of interacting—though in other online environments such as Second Life and its derivatives, interaction is much freer. Another example of technology shaping coordination is the game of geocaching, in which participants who generally never meet coordinate through GPS technology, finding caches or objects known as travel bugs (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016).
While collective consumption contexts vary, then, an overarching challenge is to understand how consumers in these contexts coordinate with each other in value co-creation—particularly when this coordination is not entirely provider-led and when it is not entirely mediated by technology controlled by the service provider. We explore such a context in the empirical work that follows. Live orchestral music provides a rich context in which to study collective consumption, providing variation across each of the above dimensions: multiple employees, as well as consumers, are frequently co-present, event formats range from traditional events that are heavily provider-led to more participatory formats that are more strongly consumer-led, and while technologies ranging from instruments to sound systems and mobile phone apps shape some interactions, the face-to-face environment provides much scope for coordination that is not technology mediated.
The challenge of how multiple actors coordinate to co-create individual and collective value in such contexts also motivates our examination of practice-based perspectives on value co-creation as well as experience-based ones. We consider these next, before proposing an integration of both perspectives (see Table 1). (For a fuller list of prior work on value co-creation from both experience- and practice-based perspectives, see Online Appendix A.)
Integrating Experience and Practice Perspectives on Value Co-Creation.
Experience-Based Perspectives on Value Co-Creation
Experience has been characterized in many ways including as service experience (Bitner et al. 1997), consumption experience (Caru and Cova 2007), and holistic customer experience (Verhoef et al. 2009). Summarizing prior definitions, Verhoef et al. (2009, p. 32) contend that customer experience is “holistic in nature and involves the customer’s cognitive, affective, emotional, social and physical responses to the retailer [or other organization].” These responses occur not just when interacting directly with the firm but also in interactions outside the firm’s direct control (Verhoef et al. 2009). Part of this customer response is evaluative, self-reflecting on preference (Arnould and Price 1993). This preference is construed through multiple valenced constructs, termed value dimensions or value categories (Holbrook 1999). Therefore, Holbrook (1999, p. 9) defines value as “an interactive, relativistic preference experience,” a definition we adopt.
Within the experience literature, value co-creation is dominantly seen as the customer’s active participation in such touchpoints as product usage, service interaction, and peer-to-peer interaction (Payne, Storbacka, and Frow 2008). The customer’s valenced response to this participation tends to be studied individually, other co-creating individuals being viewed as having their own independent ontology. Therefore, experience-based perspectives emphasize the surfacing of individuals’ private interiority, notably their value categories (McNamee and Hosking 2012; see Table 1, “Experience-Based Perspective” column). Karababa and Kjeldgaard (2014), among others, call for deeper consideration of how this value is framed by social context. To address this, we next consider practice theory.
Practice-Based Perspectives on Value Co-Creation
Practice theory is situated between individualist and holistic theoretical perspectives (Warde 2005). While there is no unified practice approach, common threads include the study of routinized interactions that establish social order (Holttinen 2010) and a predominant focus on these practices rather than on individuals as units of analysis (Korkman, Storbacka, and Harald 2010; see Table 1, “practice-based perspective” column).
We follow Barnes (2001, p. 19) in defining practices as “socially recognized, coordinated forms of activity, done or performed on the basis of what members learn from each other, and capable of being done well or badly, correctly or incorrectly.” Barnes’s definition suggests three respects in which a practice view of co-creation differs from an experience view. First, interaction between actors is socially coordinated rather than necessarily being defined by the service provider (Lusch and Vargo 2014). Second, development of competence is inherently social (Lave and Wenger 1991): Through practice participation itself, actors access the socially constructed capacity to better participate in (or “perform”) practices over time (Frow, McColl-Kennedy, and Payne 2016). Third, these practices are socially recognized including a socially negotiated sense of what constitutes their correct performance (Skålén, Pace, and Cova 2015).
The ability of this practice perspective to examine social learning offers the potential to explore a particular quandary in the study of social value co-creation. Consumers are expected to bring to the consumption context their existing skills, with value being “…created from integrating new resources with existing resources and applying previously held knowledge and skills” (Grönroos and Gummerus 2014, p. 207). The question arises as to how multiple consumers might develop the skills needed to participate in “one collaborative, dialogical process” of co-creation (Grönroos and Gummerus 2014, p. 209).
While practice performances maintain a collective sense of purpose between co-present actors (Caru and Cova 2015; Barnes 2001), individuals are carriers of the intersection of multiple practices in which each participates (Reckwitz 2002). This nexus of practices results in heterogeneity among individuals (Hartmann, Wiertz, and Arnould 2015). However, heterogeneity in individuals’ experience of practices, and the impact this has on the commercial relationships within which these practices occur, are not primary concerns of practice theory. By contrast, heterogeneity in value is central to the experience-based perspective.
Therefore, in collective consumption contexts, we propose an integration of experience-based and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation in order to understand both how actors work together and the value that results. We next outline a conceptual rationale for this endeavor, before summarizing the limited empirical work to date.
An Integrated Perspective: How Value Emerges From Co-Creation Practices
We have contended that in order to study value co-creation in collective consumption contexts, both collective practices and individual actors must be considered, as co-creation occurs through practices that coordinate social interaction, but value is individual by definition (Holbrook 1999; Wenger 1998). Although value co-creation is “inherently both beneficiary-oriented and relational” (Vargo and Lusch 2016, p. 8), most research examines either the individual’s value perceptions and idiosyncratic firm interactions or collective practices without considering how each influences the other: “While most investigations of value and value co-creation empirically focus on either the individual micro-level or the collective macro-level, a systemic perspective asserts that investigations at one level, in isolation from the other, are incomplete” (Meynhardt, Chandler, and Strathoff 2016, p. 2981). Systemic approaches are needed to evidence this link between collective and individual levels of value creation (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016): Ironically, “we must move towards a more macro, systemic view of generic actors in order to see more clearly how a single, specific actor…can participate more effectively” (Vargo and Lusch 2011, p. 182). The rationale for such a systemic approach to the interplay between practices and value is summarized in the final column of Table 1 and discussed next.
Nature of value
Whereas from an experience-based perspective value involves individual sensemaking, practice theory is more concerned with the shared meanings that are socially learned through practice participation. The two are closely related, as these meanings shape value for individuals: “what is produced and reproduced […]are not only ingrained ways of doing […]but also the normative, telic and affective dimensions of a practice that those who are involved in it experience and report” (Nicolini 2013, pp. 84, 85). An integrated perspective is interested in the dialectic between shared meanings on the one hand, and on the other an individual’s “normative, telic and affective dimensions” that correspond closely to the concept of value (Akaka, Vargo, and Schau 2015).
Nature of value co-creation
Practices shape not just meanings but also how people coordinate. In line with Figueiredo and Scaraboto (2016), value co-creation in collective consumption contexts comprises “heterogeneous accomplishments arising from the coordination of the disparate actions and interactions between multiple actors to produce value outcomes” (p. 510). Practices shape this coordination, indicating the socially preferred way of participating. Heterogeneity in value results from the unique combination of practices that each actor participates in (Reckwitz 2002). It also results from the difficulty novices can face in accessing the meanings associated with practices (Lave and Wenger 1991).
Ontology and epistemology
Our integrated perspective is underpinned by relational constructionism, which views social relations as “reality-constituting practices” (McNamee and Hosking 2012, p. 41). The self-other interactions of practice participation “shape what is warranted as real or good” (Hosking 2011, p. 54). What researchers can capture is not an actor’s internal reality, but the relational reality that actors construct and report: “a relational constructionist orientation sees relating as always re-constructing more or less stable, local, relational realities” (Hosking 2011, p. 54).
In summary, our integrated perspective foregrounds the interplay between value and value co-creation practices in collective consumption contexts. On one hand, it highlights the social recognition of “correct” performance that guides both behavior and meaning. On the other, value for individuals depends on their positions within practices, that is, their ability to perform practices to socially recognized standards.
However, this interplay has yet to receive sustained empirical attention. Of the notable work approaching this topic, McColl-Kennedy et al. (2012) identified five co-creation practice styles in a health-care context; the multidimensional nature of the resulting value was not elaborated, however. Similarly, Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould (2009) identified 12 value co-creation practices prevalent in online brand communities but did not explore their relationship to value, beyond establishing that such a relationship exists. Closest to our study, Hartmann, Wiertz, and Arnould (2015) related such brand community practices to value for members but remained silent on any moderators or other influences on this relationship. Overall, “the relationship between value creation and value perceptions remains understudied” (Gummerus 2013, p. 20). We next, therefore, examine how value emerges from value co-creation practices in a collective consumption context: live orchestral music.
Method
Data Collection
The research team gained access to a leading European orchestra's employees and events over an 8-month period. Established as a collective of instrumentalists, the orchestra, which we will term the MPO, employs 70 managers and administrators, as well as retaining freelance conductors, soloists, and educator-facilitators. These constitute the orchestra’s supply-side. Holding several hundred events a year, the orchestra provides a rich context for studying collective consumption. These include over 100 traditional concerts and numerous educational and outreach events, the latter under the MPO Inspire brand. 1 These participatory events aim to educate and inspire people with little prior contact with classical music.
The first author interviewed 34 supply-side individuals, purposively selected with the MPO's marketing director to cover a range of roles (see Table 2). Saturation was reached when adding more participants failed to reveal additional insights (Bowen 2008). An interview protocol (see Online Appendix B) ensured dependability through consistency (Beverland et al. 2010), while initial interviews helped refine the research questions and provided a theoretical focus for subsequent interviews (Beverland et al. 2010). In addition, convenience sampling was used to identify a sample of audience members, who were interviewed before, during or after events, resulting in 17 long interviews (McCracken 1988) and 277 short interviews, after which saturation was reached. The long supply-side and audience interviews averaged 1.2 hours and the short interviews 7 minutes. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, resulting in 477 pages of transcripts.
Interviews.
In addition, the first author attended 47 live events, conducting 188 hours of participant observation. The purpose was to note the observable practice performances, to complement the interview data. She kept a field journal with a methodological log including field notes and triangulation of data sources (Hirschman 1986, Charmaz 2006; see Online Appendix B). The journal also captured thoughts on theory development. The authors also reviewed MPO archives and a published history of the orchestra, to sense-check how practices and value had evolved over time (Charmaz 2006).
Data Analysis and Research Quality
Using an iterative hermeneutic approach (Arnold and Fischer 1994), the authors constantly compared emerging theory, new data, and literature (Beverland et al. 2010; Strauss and Corbin 1998). The objective of the data analysis, which followed Spiggle’s (1994) qualitative interpretation guidelines, was to understand actors’ sensemaking of practice participation, value, and their interplay. Open coding broke down transcripts and field notes into chunks of meaning. To evolve a common coding framework, two authors coded a subset of these data separately and then compared their interpretation, examining areas of divergence (Bowen 2008). Axial coding was then used to reassemble the data into sets of more interpretive categories: for example, see practice and value typologies in Tables 3 and 4. (Tables C1 and C2 in Online Appendix C indicate the number of interviews in which each category of these typologies emerged.) Emergent findings were discussed with key provider-side informants at regular intervals. This ensured that gaps and areas of contention in the emerging analysis were addressed, ensuring truth value (Wallendorf and Belk 1989). Finally, selective coding led to the identification of four variables that emerged as inhibitors or enablers of value co-creation. This iterative process resulted in the integrated practice-value framework of Figure 1. Having developed this shared interpretation, draft findings were subjected to further scrutiny by those on whom they were based (Hirschman 1986) during a 4-hour workshop with MPO staff.
Value Co-Creation Practices.
Note. *M = musician; F = facilitator; S = service provider; CT = consumer-traditional event; CP = consumer-participatory event.
Value Categories.
Note. *M = musician; F = facilitator; S = service provider; CT = consumer-traditional event; CP = consumer-participatory event.
The interplay between co-creation practices and value in collective consumption contexts.
Findings
The Interplay Between Co-Creation Practices and Value
Our findings induced four variables affecting the relationship between practices and value: role rigidity, consumer heterogeneity conflict, participation access, and signposting (see Figure 1). In summary, role rigidity and consumer heterogeneity conflict may constrain value; however, service providers may mitigate these constraints through participation access and signposting. A common theme in these variables is consumer learning: how differences in the prior learning of consumers are crucial to value for both novices and experts and how the service provider can best handle this consumer heterogeneity. We begin by describing these four variables in turn; subsequent subsections discuss novel co-creation practices and value categories.
Role rigidity
We define role rigidity as the extent to which actor roles are uniformly prescribed rather than flexible. Building on Moeller et al. (2013), we view a role as an actor’s position within intersecting practices. Moeller et al. (2013) emphasize actors’ abilities to perform roles to the appropriate standards in collaboration with others. We add that role rigidity and its opposite pole, role flexibility, affect how actors may perform practices which in turn impact value. For traditional concerts, actors’ roles are strict, with little room for variation: The concert hall is quite a formal setting. There is all this business of us dressing up for a start, having artists coming on stage, and bowing. And there is applause: do you applaud at the right place?…And so for people that do not go to concerts regularly, that can be quite an alienating format. And certainly [in] the community around the [concert hall], there is a huge range of communities for which classical music is not a part [of their lives]. (MPO member, M1) Some parents bring kids less than five years old! How are they going to get through a symphony?! It is the parents’ fault—the five-year-old must sit there very quietly, they must behave. It is the discipline that is the problem. (CP15) They [the audience] behave I guess in the way that they would behave in their own school hall. They don’t know how to behave in a concert hall, which is fine. It doesn’t matter if the program is right and the presenter is right, which they almost always are. She [a presenter] has them in the palm of her hand and if they are noisy, she always stops that easily. They will be absolutely wrapped around her finger. (MPO player, M6) I like the idea of people sitting together, not having a score [sheet music], not having things so defined. You can just sit and create things. It kind of encourages more creativity and that is what I like. (CP157) I find the Evolv fun because it is a different type of music, no one judges how you play. (CP160)
Consumer heterogeneity conflict
Consumer heterogeneity conflict refers to inter-actor tensions that emerge during practice performances when actors do not perform practices equally well compared to socially recognized standards. This can result in negative value for some. At traditional concerts, experienced concert-goers often expressed their frustration with novices’ ignorance of protocol: I used to go to the lunchtime concerts and it tends to be a different sort of crowd, older, slightly more sophisticated, often wealthier. They were much more uptight about coughing…People who understand music are not clappers at every stage, which would sound a bit old-fashioned—I don’t like clapping at everything. [Experienced concert-goers] understand music, they listen attentively. (CT91) I don’t like the introductory notes to the pieces. I think that it is difficult to strike the right note with that because you don’t know what sort of people the audience are. I personally don’t like biographical comments, but then I am a music academic and performer so maybe I am a bit snooty about that. (CT81) It takes away from your own interpretation if somebody is telling you.…What I don’t want is someone telling me it was special or telling me what it was about or how to interpret it. That probably sounds very arrogant; it is not meant to be. (CT4)
Participation access
Participation access refers to the extent to which actors possess or can acquire the situated understandings required to fully participate in practices. At traditional concerts, the etiquette included knowing not to take photos and understanding how to greet the players who arrive on stage dressed in “tails,” a 19th-century formal dress. To feel comfortable, audience members needed to have learned socially preferred behaviors through exposure to inculcating practices (see Table 3); without this prior learning, novices were at risk of feeling like outsiders who were merely observing from afar—the practice we term “spectating.” This could lead to alienation or boredom. An MPO supporter described attending another orchestra’s concerts: When I go to [venue], I find it depressing. I feel that there is a certain standoffishness amongst the audience there. (CT3) I encourage them to sit down when we sit down, but children sometimes won’t, especially when they have learned to walk…I tell parents not to get stressed about it—if they don’t come back, they’ll be over there and then suddenly, the music will get them and they will come back. So you are really giving a child that space to come back when they are ready, to come back and sing along. (Staff member, F7) I do tons of planning but know that anything can happen. For instance, at one of the schools concerts, one of the kids heckled me and I just had to go with that. I think that my role is to be between the audience and the orchestra…It is to break down that barrier between this amazing thing that’s going on stage and what is happening in the audience.…I think that I am more audience because I am not a performer. I do play an instrument but not to that standard, so I am on their side, the audience. (F3) My daughter would like to have a choice in what songs she has to sing. There were some songs that she sang that she would not have been exposed to because it’s just not the type of music that we listen to. There are so many songs out there that can really relate to her experience of being a girl, living in a city. (CP178) One of the things that is quite nice is that they organize these little events where you meet people of your own age. It’s just a bit more sociable. (CP47)
Signposting
Signposting refers to the extent to which actors are guided in selecting and combining practices that match their skills and competence. An example was the use of advertising that clearly communicated what kinds of events would suit which skill levels, taking into account the relative role rigidity of practices associated with particular events. The orchestra’s website and promotional materials were increasingly organized not by date but by event format. More experienced concertgoers were directed to series of events that suited them—for instance, by categorizing events by their favorite performers or musical genres, in the knowledge that these and the requisite practice performance standards would be relatively familiar to them. The service provider directed novices to less formal participatory events aligned with their competence. For example, one event in a format called an “Inspire Day” was themed around Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. The day provided additional cultural resources (Akaka, Vargo, and Schau 2015) such as perspectives on the composer’s life, the technical structure of the music, and a speaker’s subjective reactions to the work: I am slowly discovering the background and the historical details to the music I listen to, which is really cool.…I do find it hard to learn about music and find out where to get information, so things like the Inspire Day are fantastic for people like me. I don’t play, I don’t compose, but I go just to find out about, especially from experts. (CP201) We have one example with a young violinist, who first took part in a strings project for mixed abilities. He spent a couple of years playing some of the easier parts, and, at the time, one of the MPO players said, “I think he is someone that you really need to keep an eye on, he is really, really good.” And he didn’t know. So, we kept an eye on him, and then he joined our group [group name], a program for teenagers with high musical potential. He [now] has a place at [a prestigious music college] as a result of the initial advice from violinists in the MPO. It was a personal connection with this MPO player in the orchestra who gave him the confidence and said this is what he should do next. (F10) The composers come in, meet each other and the key people involved, including a composition director and the players. We also encourage them to go to MPO rehearsals to meet players and to discuss ideas with them, show them parts. Otherwise, if you have composers from a jazz background, some of them have no idea how to write for the harp or percussion or whatever. It is not a performance at the end, it is a workshop. It means that if they have spent time with the players, their piece will work out a lot better. (F9)
Through attention to signposting and participation access, then, the service provider can ensure that both novices and experts experience value despite differences in their prior learning. How actors coordinate in order to achieve this—and how this learning gap can over time be bridged—is further explored in the practices outlined in Table 3, which we discuss next.
Value Co-Creation Practices
Our analysis induced a typology of four value co-creation practice categories—inculcating, facilitating, realizing, and sustaining—and a number of subcategories (see Table 3 for definitions and examples). Broadly, these confirm previous practice typologies (Echeverri and Skålén 2011; McColl-Kennedy et al. 2012; Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009; Skålén, Pace, and Cova 2015); however, two novel practices, “reaching out” and “guided mentoring,” emerged within the facilitating category. These tackle in different ways the challenge of participation access discussed above, whereby some novice actors do not have the requisite skills and competence to access shared meanings and thereby experience value. They extend beyond the welcoming, informing, and empathizing behaviors that have been previously identified within the facilitating category (Echeverri and Skålén 2011; Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould 2009) by facilitating social learning between multiple actors.
Guided mentoring practices
Guided mentoring practices demystify realizing practices—the practices relating to real-time engagement in collective performance (see Table 3)—through explanatory commentary and demonstrations for novices. At the MPO, this included the use of a facilitator called an animateur, whose explicit role it was to explain the practices related to the event, including associated meanings, as they happened. Depending on the audience, the animateur might talk through the workings of the instruments and the music’s historical context or explain what the music means artistically, making explicit the intended emotional effect by articulating the animateur’s own emotional response. The animateur might also beat out a rhythm for children, or encourage them to listen for certain sounds. An animateur explained how, in concerts for children under 5 years of age, she encourages the children to join in with correct performance through example, while being flexible regarding their competence and inclinations: I say at the beginning: I want you to enjoy this. I want you to—if you can—imitate what I do. The child will see it’s OK. However, some children don’t want to do that and want to hold your hand or get distracted. So really it’s a balance between going with the children’s flow and giving them that space to come back when they are ready. And any more than that, they pick up as I sing along. (F7) My son didn’t stop talking about the elephant who had been the tuba. He really liked it. It was excellent the way the animals were matched to the character of the instrument and the sound. He just seemed really transfixed. It gave him something to talk about at home and he was able to identify some instruments which maybe he wouldn’t have been exposed to. He had never seen a tuba before. Might even take it up! (CP180)
Reaching out practices
Reaching out refers to practices that cultivate inclusive access by removing barriers to participation for novice actors. Such practices were observed in activities that went beyond the concert hall such as free outdoor orchestral events in the city's main square, a public space enabling anyone to stumble on the performance. Another example was a year-round program of engagement with other institutions such as disadvantaged schools. Reaching out also incorporated “bringing in,” the orchestra encouraging community groups in the concert-hall. Careful consideration was given to the design of these “outreach” concerts. Staff worked with teachers and community representatives in advance to provide them with background on the music and coaching on how to make the learning experience enjoyable. For example, for performances of “Milly’s Marvelous Hat,” pupils arrived at the concert wearing hats they had made at school. A teacher appreciated the impact of these reaching-out practices: I think the way that the concert was put together was fantastic—it was both educational and enjoyable. So, it’s not just me telling the students about music in the classroom—they realize that they need to know what we learn about in school in order to enjoy the music. (CP242) I like to think that the community strand of MPO Inspire offers activities to everybody and anybody and ways that they can engage with the orchestra. That might vary from weekly sessions with moms and toddlers to groups of adults with learning disabilities. The events we offer vary in style, scale, content, and location. So we do weekly sessions with some groups. It might be concerts, we might do interactive workshops; so it’s quite a varied strand of the education programme. It’s a way in which we can interact with people who may not have had lots of experience in music, or want their first introduction to the world of music. (F12)
Value Categories
Seven categories of value from co-creation practices emerged, some of which we have briefly alluded to earlier: affective, social, somatic, aesthetic, utilitarian, epistemic, and spiritual (see Table 4). These are largely consistent with previous conceptual (Holbrook, 1999; Sheth, Newman, and Gross 1991) and empirical (Hartmann, Wiertz, and Arnould 2015) studies; however, the social and somatic value categories offer novel insights into the value that can arise in collective consumption contexts. We begin with social value which demonstrates that, in a collective consumption context, value itself may be collective as well as individual.
Social value
Social value refers to actors’ valenced experiences of connection with and help given to other actors with whom they coordinate. We observed two subcategories of social value, namely inclusive value and altruistic value. Inclusive value comprises feelings of connection with, or conversely, alienation from other actors. For example, an objective of the orchestra in reaching out to local schools is to address the potential alienation experienced by novices not previously socialized into classical music: Music in our school, people are very scared of it. What would really help the kids would be to get all the teachers in the school to do a whole day of music training, with maybe a follow-up day later, just to see that it is not scary and that anyone can do it, you don’t have to have a passion for music. (School teacher, CT24) The conservatoire [higher education establishments specializing in music] approach is all about competitive performance geared towards being a soloist. It is creating a lot of players who are quite happy to sit in a room and play viola sonatas to themselves, and they are told by their tutors at the end, don’t worry about orchestral playing, that is for people who did not quite make it. However, it’s just an entirely different skill. While the conservatoire approach becomes an individual sport, being a member of a professional or amateur orchestra is about the us-ness, it is about ensemble abilities. An Inspire orchestra or education programme can offer the we-ness of music-making in a way that conservatories can’t, don’t or won’t. (M2) They laugh, and I laugh and I love it. And, at the end, I’ll end up with a dance: the grannies are dancing, the mums, the dads, the musicians, and it is like, like you know, an inclusive, fabulous experience. (F7)
Somatic value
Somatic value—actors’ embodied response to practice participation which is immediately, spontaneously, and physiologically felt, for example, as a “tingle down my spine and goosebumps” (CP125)—is absent from other multidimensional conceptualizations of value, yet prevalent in our data. This physiological response includes sight, sound, smell, touch, and movement. One audience member reflected on a concert called Eclectica of The North, which involved instruments evoking a frozen Scandinavian landscape: I could hear and feel all the snow; it was very snow and ice music—very good; you could sense the ice. (C25) A lot of concerts have an atmosphere of their own and I am not sure why that happens. It’s usually, there is something, you feel something quite special is going on. Things may happen in a concert in a very interesting way that had not been planned in rehearsal. Sometimes it can be listening to someone playing a very beautiful solo, it is just there, it is an atmosphere, it is not plannable. There is often a conductor who really loves the music, there is something in the way that they are reacting to the music or in the way that they are directing it. They convey that spirit, their spirit of enjoyment, of pleasure in the music, and that changes things. (M3) I like the way he [names conductor] conducts. It is fascinating to watch him conducting, seeing all these wonderful gestures from behind. It is brilliant the way he molds the music with great expression in his hands. I can’t imagine what his face is doing! (Audience member, C199) Audiences can and do react in a way which sort of gives them a body, like an audience reaction, a Mexican wave, spontaneous applause; or if someone starts coughing and everyone joins in, you know you’ve lost them, you’ve lost them straight away; it is a funny thing with audiences. (Instrumentalist, M6)
Theoretical Contributions and Transferability
In response to Ostrom et al. (2015) among others, our article makes three contributions that deepen the understanding of value co-creation in collective consumption contexts. First, we provide a theoretical synthesis of experience-based and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation into an integrated perspective. This synthesis leverages the concept of social practices as a lens for understanding how actors coordinate collectively, while acknowledging that the value that results is an individual experience. Second, we apply this integrated synthesis to identify four variables influencing the relationship between co-creation practices and value. These show the importance of considering heterogeneity in the prior learning that consumers bring to the context and suggest how this can best be handled by service providers. Third, we derive typologies of practices and value in a collective consumption context, enriching previous typologies. The novel practices also concern social learning, detailing how more experienced participants can help relative novices participate. One of the novel value categories, social value, reveals why experts can be happy to help; the other, somatic value, may be heightened when other actors are co-present. We expand on these in turn.
Shared Meanings and Value: How Value Is Co-Created Through Practice Participation
We integrate experience-based and practice-based perspectives on value co-creation in Table 1 and the framework of Figure 1. This integrated perspective proposes an interplay or dialectic between value for individuals and the collective practices through which value arises. Whereas much work on co-creation takes a process perspective on how actors such as a service representative and a customer coordinate (Payne, Storbacka, and Frow 2008), this process perspective struggles to represent the agency of a group of consumers, or more hybrid actors, in a collective consumption context: “within collective service experiences,…companies interact with an intermediary—the community—that is not just a collection of individuals but is capable of collective action” (Caru and Cova 2015, p. 288). A practice perspective has the benefit of modeling how this collective action can arise socially (Barnes 2001) in a collective consumption context rather than being entirely determined by a process designed by the service provider.
A practice perspective also helps in unpacking the relationship between what actors do and the value that results. In a practice view, practices encompass the shared meanings that are attached to them. These meanings shape but do not entirely determine value for participants, as our empirical work illustrates. Our integrated perspective therefore posits that value is both intersubjectively and phenomenologically determined.
This implies that in order to fully understand co-creation, researchers must go beyond the customer-supplier dyad (Vargo and Lusch 2011) to uncover the practices which encapsulate shared meanings and reveal how these practices shape value for individuals. Further work is required to explore this practice-value dialectic in collective consumption contexts which vary from ours across the dimensions we identified earlier: Whether multiple employees are present or just multiple consumers, whether practices are provider- and/or consumer-led, and the extent to which coordination between actors is enabled by technology. These contexts may vary, for example, in the practices and value categories, which may include or go beyond those identified in this research. Before considering these typologies further, we consider the variables affecting the interplay between them, a novel feature of this study.
Harnessing Difference: The Interplay Between Co-Creation Practices and Value
Our second contribution is the identification of four variables affecting the interplay between co-creation practices and value: role rigidity, consumer heterogeneity conflict, participation access, and signposting. A common theme of these variables is their concern for heterogeneity in learning: the differing understandings of practice performance (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson 2012) that consumers bring to the collective consumption context and how the service provider can best cope with this heterogeneity and ensure value for all. We discuss the four variables in turn, beginning with role rigidity.
Building on Caru and Cova (2015), who highlight that value co-creation varies according to who initiates practices (the firm, consumers, or both), we demonstrate that in collective consumption contexts the flexibility of roles is also critical. Specifically, where practice performances are tightly scripted—perhaps for understandable reasons, such as the complexity of a collective task—role rigidity can constrain value for novices who do not yet appreciate the expected behaviors. Service providers can seek more flexible role options to reduce this barrier.
Another example of a context where role rigidity may prove to constrain value is martial arts. Potential participants in taekwondo, for example, may feel intimidated by the prescribed roles which seem to extend beyond the physical movements to such issues as clothing and behavior throughout a competition, which is often someone’s first exposure to the discipline, whether watching on television or supporting friends at a competition. As taekwondo expands its membership base, service providers endeavor to free up some of these roles, as evidenced in such adaptations as freestyle routines and looser performance standards for beginners.
Such differing practice performance standards for different actors can, however, lead to tensions between them. Extending recent work on managing diversity in collective consumption (Thomas, Price, and Schau 2013), we find that consumer heterogeneity conflict arises when some actors cannot perform practices to socially recognized standards. Skålén, Pace, and Cova (2015) define this mismatch as misalignment. We add that misalignment can occur not only between service providers and consumers but also between expert and novice consumers.
Further research would be valuable to explore this phenomenon in other contexts where abilities vary. In residential homes for the elderly, for example, practices around the use of common rooms or shared mealtimes may cause conflict. Residents may vary in their competence to self-mobilize and feed themselves, or in their sensitivity to others around noise. Research might explore whether all residents possess the abilities to participate in practices to socially accepted standards, whether tensions arise if they do not, and how these might be overcome. Two approaches that service providers can use to mitigate the negative impacts of consumer heterogeneity conflict are participation access and signposting, as we discuss next.
We have seen that participation access depends on actors possessing the requisite understandings for full participation. In classical music, these are often inculcated in childhood. Where this has not occurred, the service provider can design services to lower the understanding barrier and/or to coach novices (e.g., through guided mentoring).
This finding highlights the role of social learning in service design. Yu and Sangiorgi (2018) show that informing service design with contextual understanding improves value for consumers. We add that service design needs to consider levels of social learning. The required understandings about how to perform practices “correctly” may be tacit rather than explicit and can only be gained by novices in the collective consumption context itself through such approaches as guided mentoring. Consider, for example, the problem of schoolchildren failing to translate sports participation at school into an active adult life through sports club membership. Some schools have aided this transition by setting up school trips to a range of local clubs for trial events designed to require low levels of prior understanding of clubs and how to behave in them. Research might usefully explore participation access in other such contexts where the requisite understandings create a barrier to participation. The most appropriate service design approaches for opening up access—whether by reducing learning requirements, making tacit understandings explicit, or encouraging role flexibility—might benefit from action research, building on Yu and Sangiorgi’s (2018) exploration of experience design methods.
Signposting, the final variable impacting the interplay between practices and value can also help with conflict between heterogeneous consumers:
It is common for service organizations to steer consumers toward a service offering through customer relationship management (CRM) processes, generally with the aim of maximizing the immediate profitability of the customer, though some CRM approaches also take into account the intervention’s social impact (Ascarza et al. 2017). We add that signposting needs to take consumer competence into account and, in particular, their situated understandings that enable participation in value co-creation practices. For example, in preventative health issues such as weight reduction, signposting rarely extends beyond a health professional providing an individual with homogeneous lifestyle advice. A more contingent approach to guiding consumers might consider whether the consumer is within a household with healthy practices around food purchasing, food consumption, sleep, and exercise. If not, the household might be guided collectively by signposting toward sources of help, perhaps via peer mentoring. Research could usefully examine whether CRM approaches can effectively be adapted to take into account skills and competence in practice participation.
These four variables show how differences in the prior learning of consumers can impact value for them and suggest how service providers can best mitigate the negative effects of novices sharing a consumption context with experts. The practices of Table 3 also concern the social learning by which novices can, over time, participate more fully. We consider these next.
Supporting Social Learning: Value and Value Co-Creation Practices
Our third contribution is the typologies of value co-creation practices and value categories shown in Tables 3 and 4. Wilden et al. (2017, p. 12) commented that “research that focuses on organizational or managerial practices or connects external and internal practices is limited.” The practice typology (Table 3) extends this limited research, notably Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould (2009) and Echeverri and Skålén (2011), with two novel provider-led facilitating practices, reaching out and guided mentoring, that enable social learning:
These practices go considerably beyond the ‘welcoming' practices relating to new members reported by Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould (2009) by illuminating how expert actors can coordinate the social learning of novices. They extend Skålén et al.’s (2015) research on representational practices by demonstrating the multifaceted role of service providers in enabling social learning, with social value (discussed below) forming a motivator for such efforts. Guided mentoring can also be seen as a normalizing practice (Lusch and Vargo 2014), in that it establishes norms for novices, guiding them on acceptable behaviors as well as the socially recognized standards of collective performance—that is, the normative teleo-affective structure of practice (Schatzki 2002; Nicolini 2013). It can further be seen as an alignment practice, which Thomas, Price, and Schau (2013) proposed as a means of accommodating differences between service providers and consumers. In a similar vein, guided mentoring helps to align the performance standards of novice and expert participants. Guided mentoring practices are somewhat akin to “rites of integration” (Arnould and Price 1993) in that they facilitate social interactions, creating a temporary sense of closeness. However, guided mentoring adds a social learning element that can have long-lasting effects on participation.
Further research is needed to establish to what extent these practices occur in other collective consumption contexts. One might expect both practices to be prominent in other contexts with high role rigidity such as competitive or professional team sports. Guided mentoring may also prove to be more prominent where participation is problematic due to the tacit understandings needed, such as beginners’ wine tasting, meditation classes, or counseling. The highly effective UK-based charity The Samaritans, for example, coordinates peer support by volunteers to depressed people. The volunteers’ training involves reification of the art of supportive conversation, unpacking what makes active listening work well through repeated analysis and practice, before encouraging counselors to focus on authentically engaging the client.
Turning to value, the social and somatic value categories enrich previous conceptual (Holbrook, 1999; Sheth, Newman, and Gross 1991) and empirical (Hartmann, Wiertz, and Arnould 2015) value typologies:
Social value complements the concepts of status and esteem in Holbrook’s (1999) value typology. Its subcategory of inclusive value (feeling connected with other actors) is appreciated without high status necessarily being present. Similarly, helping other actors to achieve their aims can lead to altruistic value. Notably, in our data, both of these subcategories occurred when expert actors helped novices through such practices as guided mentoring and reaching out. Social value may therefore also be present in other contexts where these practices occur. This value category matches the observation within social identity theory that seeing oneself as central within a group is a strong motivator, as is making the group successful (Brown 2000). Social value may, therefore, prove to be prominent wherever a collective consumption context generates a strong social identity, such as the UK’s “MumsNet” community of mothers, or reflects a preexisting identity, such as congregations attending religious events.
The absence of somatic value in previous typologies is surprising given the acknowledged multisensory nature of much service experience (Verhoef et al. 2009). Doubtless, as with all value categories, the salience of somatic value will vary across contexts. For example, it may prove particularly relevant in contexts such as health care, retail, and extreme sports. Somatic value may, however, be more salient in collective consumption contexts than in more individual ones, all other things being equal: Argo, Dahl, and Manchanda (2005) established that the mere physical presence of others, even in the absence of significant coordination, increases sensory arousal and hypothesized that a large social presence may lead to even more heightened arousal. Sensory ethnography (Valtonen, Markuksela, and Moisander 2010) might be applied beneficially to illuminate somatic value in such contexts.
Managerial Implications
The preceding discussion has touched on a number of implications for service managers which we summarize next under the headings of the four variables affecting the interplay between co-creation practices and value (Key Findings 1–4 above). First, service managers need to anticipate potential barriers to value co-creation, such as role rigidity and consumer heterogeneity conflict, that can arise from differences in consumers’ prior learning. To address role rigidity, roles can be made more flexible for novices. For example, a shift is evident in “fine dining” toward more informal restaurants where customers feel less intimidated by tacit rules, such as which cutlery applies to which course, or how to attract a waiter’s attention. A chain of UK brasseries run by high-profile French chef Raymond Blanc has considerably improved its profits by rebranding its restaurants as “pubs” rather than “brasseries,” without any significant changes to the food. This branding primes a set of flexible practices that British people feel comfortable with. Alternatively, if rigid roles are unavoidable, attention should be given to how these roles might be coached. For example, pottery-making studios have unavoidable rules about the safe use of a shared hot kiln, as well as more tacit rules such as not touching other people’s pottery in case it becomes marked—a common source of conflict when inexperienced potters are present. One studio has made these tacit rules explicit in a lighthearted set of “10 Commandments” such as “Thou shalt not touch projects that do not belong to thee.”
This example also illustrates the second potential inhibitor of value that managers should watch out for: the consumer heterogeneity conflict that can arise when novices and experts are co-present. This is particularly likely to occur when practice standards are high, as might be the case in other high-rigidity contexts such as choral singing or collective games of skill such as bridge and poker. To accommodate differences in practice performance standards, managers need to think through who is simultaneously involved. For example, Vibrant Partnerships runs London’s VeloPark velodrome, used in the 2012 Olympics, where groups of up to 15 cyclists at a time cycle contemporaneously circuiting the same indoor track with no brakes at up to 90 kph. Here, consumer heterogeneity could lead to physical danger. The service provider manages this diversity through a program of mandatory “taster” sessions and then a structured pathway of skills enhancement. These sessions deliberately build social learning, such as how to share the track, as well as individual skills. Sometimes, though, the best solution to consumer heterogeneity conflict is simply physical (or virtual) separation. For example, vibrant partnerships also offers women-only group sessions. This inclusive, sensitive approach has achieved the highest utilization rates of any such national facility, helping to feed the elite levels of a sport in which the UK is highly successful.
This example illustrates two solutions to the challenge of consumer heterogeneity conflict. The first is conscious attention to participation access. Here, the concept of customer learning journeys can be useful—with the proviso that in collective consumption contexts, the journey involves social learning. This may be achieved by empowering experts to support newcomers, using the power of altruistic value. For example, children’s software programming club Coderdojo is a volunteer-led global network supporting children between 7 and 17 years of age, who are called “ninjas.” Experienced adult programmers freely give their time, presumably for altruistic value, to develop the children’s skills as they work in groups called “dojos.”
The VeloPark operator also illustrates the importance of a second solution—signposting—whereby consumers are steered toward offers where the practices are accessible to them and where they will not conflict with others. Ballroom dancing is another context where tension can arise due to consumer heterogeneity, as experienced competitive ballroom dancers may find themselves literally knocked off course by beginners. Clear signaling of what events suit which dancers can help considerably. While one reasonable approach is to organize dance events by participant competence, an innovative offer by one training provider is classes where every consumer is paired not with another novice but with a professional.
These recommendations depend on managers being aware of social barriers to co-creation. An overarching implication for service managers, therefore, is that insight is required into value co-creation practices and how these enable or inhibit value. This insight needs to identify whether individual consumers can access these practices, how they can learn to perform them, and what barriers exist to this social learning. The benefits of such insight are illustrated by the MPO itself, for whom this study constituted market research being conducted (without charge) by a business school. The orchestra had a strong understanding of its core customers but did not know why 70% of first-time attendees failed to return. The problem did not appear to be pricing, as discounting a second visit did not improve return rates. This study’s findings resulted in the recognition that a key problem was how to support social learning. This resulted in a number of business changes, such as improvements to signposting, and identifying and filling gaps in learning journeys. To uncover the sociocultural dimension of participants’ experience, such customer insight needs to be immersive. We recommend at least interviews held within the consumption context itself, and ideally participant observation, to uncover co-creation practices and how they relate to value for those involved.
Concluding Remarks
Collective consumption contexts present a quandary as to how consumers coordinate with each other in value co-creation. Integrating practice-based and experience-based perspectives uncovers how this occurs and thereby contributes to the task of bridging between micro and meso levels within service ecosystems. An emergent benefit of this integration is in highlighting the importance of social learning in collective consumption. Participants need to learn not just what to do but also what meanings are attached to these practices. The distinction between an orchestral score and the meaning of the music for those who hear or play it is both a literal example of this and a metaphor for it. Attention to differences in prior learning, and to the practices that reduce these differences, is critical if service providers are to ensure value for novices and experts alike.
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Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the anonymous informants from professional instrumentalists, conductors, managers and staff to amateur musicians and concert-goers. They also acknowledge with thanks the support of Cranfield Customer Management Forum and are very grateful to the three anonymous JSR reviewers, the AE, and two JSR editors for their substantial help in shaping the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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