Value Co-Creation in Industrial Buyer-Seller Partnerships ... - Doria

7.1 Perceived value as a prerequisite for high-involvementThe positive assessment of benefits and sacrifices of involvement leads to perceived valueof the involvement in a relationship; the positive trade-off between benefits and sacrifices isargued to be a prerequisite for pursuing a relationship and consequently also a prerequisitefor value co-creation potential.In the following I present and discuss the benefits and sacrifices found in theinterviews with people from the Seller and the Buyer. The reason why I emphasize thedifference between perceived value of the relationship and value co-creation in therelationship is that I found that they are different. Perceived value of a relationship is an exante assessment made before the actual potential has been realized. The perception of thetrade-off is largely intuitive, not fact-based, surely more like a general assessment of thisbeing the right thing to do. This has to do with the fact that the outcome of involvement ishard to predict in advance since the value is created in the process of pursuing therelationship. The assessment of perceived value is dependent on who is making theassessment. The value of the partnership in this case is perceived differently by peopleinvolved for instance in procurement, who are concerned about pricing, delivery, anddiscounts, and people in top management who are concerned about total operationalefficiency, safety, and reliability.Value co-creation in the relationship is the actual day-to-day activities that are carriedout within the frames of the relationship. This is the process by which resources arecombined through exchange through interaction and mutual activity, processes that aim forincreased efficiency or more effective use of resources.7.1.1 Value perceived by the BuyerThe 15 interviews with people from the Buyer organization revealed a number of issues thatwere perceived as benefits and sacrifices associated with the partnership with the Seller. Thebenefits and sacrifices summarized in the figure below are discussed in the followingsections.139