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

value – ways to understand and think about this difficult intangible will be discussed inthesis.In business, there obviously has to be an objective measurement unit, such as money,to enable companies to manage and control their business. Therefore, “ money” and themeasuring of value in monetary units, is a necessary prerequisite for the management ofbusiness operations. This will not be denied or neglected in this study, even though theinterest here is not in quantifying value in monetary terms. Rather the focus is on theprocess of value co-creation through interaction, by the parties that are engaged in abusiness relationship.1.1 The Research ProblemIn a world of networks and relationships on industrial markets there is a growing interest inunderstanding the phenomenon of value and, in understanding the process of creating valuethrough interaction. What is value and valuable in a networked world of relationships andnetworks? There is an interest in the field of industrial marketing to understand the processof how value is created through interaction, instead of just looking at value as a static entitythat can be measured through an objective measure such as money. Given the recent interestin the value phenomenon, there are an increasing number of studies that categorize andconceptualize value in different ways. (Anderson & Narus, 1998, 1999, 2004, Walter el al.(2001, Biong et al. 1997, Ulaga 2001, Dyer and Singh 1998, Normann and Ramirez 1993,1994, Dwyer et al. 1987, Flint et al., 1997, Ravald & Grönroos, 1996, Shapiro et al., 1987,Storbacka, 1997, Wilson et al., 1994, Håkansson & Prenkert 2004, Möller & Svahn 2003) 2 .The shortcoming with most of the existing studies is that they do not provide insight into theprocess of the parties in a relationship creating value together. Most studies focus oncustomer value i.e. how the supplier can get the most out of its customer relationships or onhow to categorize the value phenomenon in different ways.When discussing heterogeneous resources, possessed by two parties in a buyer-sellerrelationship, the issue of interaction becomes crucial. The parties interact in order to makethe best out of both their own resources, the other party’ s resources and connectedresources. Thus the success or outcome of the relationship is highly dependent on how wellthe parties make use of the resources possessed by the other party.“The features activated in an interface are the result of interaction process over time,where resources have been systematically related and where a solution of how to122 For on overview of the use of the value concept refer to Chapter 3.