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

3. A CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATION INTO VALUEThe chapter on value begins with a short overview of the historical roots of the concept andgoes further into discussing how the concept has been used within different schools ofthought in business studies, going more specifically into the field of industrial marketing.The chapter ends with a definition of value that is used in the study with concludingremarks.3.1 Why study value?The overriding motive for this study is to explore value in the context of industrial buyersellerrelationships and moreover to explore how value is created in such a relationship. Thevalue concept has been used in business studies within several different schools of thought.There is no universal definition of value, but several different conceptualizations andinterpretations of the phenomenon - conceptualizations that depend on the context andpurpose of study. 3As already mentioned in the introduction, the study of an intangible phenomenon suchas value is difficult and complicated in many ways. What makes the study of value difficultis the relativity of the phenomenon. Value is defined and understood differently dependingon who does the assessment, when it is done, under which circumstances and for whatpurpose.This study focuses on understanding how value is used in industrial marketing in thecontext of industrial buyer-seller relationships. The aim is to find out how the value concepthas been used theoretically and to explore empirically what is perceived to be the valuecreated in a focal buyer-seller relationship with the aim of increasing the understanding ofthis complex intangible.3.2 The history of value in business studiesThe traditional view on value in business has its roots in industrial assembly lines. Here theconcept is understood as value that can be calculated with a single metric, i.e. the monetary463 What deserves to be pointed out is that in this study the understanding of “ value” as “ values” in the meaning ofethical and moral constructs are not considered. These highly interesting topics are excluded simply because thisstudy has a different focus.