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

Ramirez (1999) has introduced the idea of “ value co-production” as opposed to thetraditional industrial idea of value creation. He sees the role of the customer to be one of themain differences between the two schools of thought. In industrial value creation, customerswere seen as “ destroying the value which producers had created for them” while in thealternative view customers are actively co-creating and re-creating value both with theirsuppliers and their own customers (p 51).1.2.5 PartnershipWhat makes a relationship a partnership? There is no easy answer to this question. Ingeneral a partnership is seen as a high-involvement relationship characterized by somethingreferred to as “ closeness” . According to Gadde & Snehota (2000) closeness should beregarded as degrees of integration and go further into proposing involvement as a relevantconcept when discussing partnerships. They conclude that involvement has threedimensions: coordination of activities, adaptations of resources, and interaction amongindividuals. In summary a partnership should be characterized by involvement along thelines of activities, resources, and individuals.In this study the word partnership has been chosen and is used because the involvedcompanies refer to their relationship as a partnership. The above definition suits this studybecause involvement can be identified between the companies according to the threedimensions suggested above. However, the definitions provided by the interviewees in thestudy give a different perspective on a partnership, something that will be further discussedin the case analysis section.1.2.6 InteractionInteraction is here seen as the basic prerequisite for a relationship – interaction is whatmakes a relationship. Interaction is the means of two companies getting to and making useof each other’ s resources. Holmlund and Törnroos (1997) define relationships as “aninterdependent process of continuous interation and exchange between at least two actorsin a business network context” . (p 305). Highlighting the connection between relationshipsand interaction. Relationships are interaction processes over time, as Håkansson andWaluszewski (2001) puts it: “The features activated in an interface are the result ofinteraction processes over time (… ) where a solution of how to combine them has beengradually chiseled out (… )In other words, the interfaces determine the use and the value ofresources.” (p 4).19