A Longitudinal Investigation of the Value Co-creation Process in Business-to-Business Market

Value management is at the center of marketing and supply chain management. Value co-creation by suppliers and customers has recently gained critical importance in marketing thinking and practice. Philosophically, the emerging service dominant logic of marketing views the customer as always a co-producer of value (Vargo and Lusch 2004), while practically, corporations have moved integrated value chain management to the center stage of enterprise management (Flint and Mentzer 2006). Although the strategic implications of value co-creation have been clearly recognized (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004), little systematic research exists that examines the value co-creation processes, their antecedents, conditions, and performance outcomes.This research investigates the co-creation process and the determinants and performance outcomes of successful co-creation in the business to business (B2B) market context. The researchers address three general research questions that are fundamental to value management research and practice. First, how is value co-creation manifested in key business processes? Second, what conditions enable and motivate suppliers and customers alike to engage in value co-creation? Third, under what conditions will value co-creation contribute to the performance of one party, two parties, and all parties involved? A 3-year longitudinal study is proposed to develop grounded theory and empirical evidence for the theory.