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

as profit or margin (Ghosh & John 1999), or something that the customer expects to get.The emphasis has traditionally been on value for the customer - how the supplier can create“ superior value” for its customers in order to stay competitive. However, recently there hasalso been an interest in how and what kind of value is created for the supplier (Walter, et al.2001, Ramirez 1999). There is a great amount of literature on networks and how companiesshould create partnerships with partners (other suppliers) that complement their offering. Byjoining forces they can offer the customer something of superior value when compared withcompetitors on the market, resulting in increased chances to keep the business. These kindsof networks of partnerships have been referred to by several different names by differentscholars. They have been called supply chains, market networks, value chains, value nets, orvalue creating networks (Kothandaraman & Wilson 2001, p 384). What most of these havein common is that they focus on suppliers joining forces to offer the customer something.The view that is taken in this study where relationships with customers are the ones wherevalue is co-created is somewhat different and has not received as much attention yet.The basic underlying assumptions in the interaction approach and industrial networktheory are that relationships exist and that there is more than one active party in arelationship. Relationships are defined as mutually oriented interaction between tworeciprocally committed parties. What characterizes a relationship is there it is a process overtime and that there is interdependence between the involved companies. By joiningactivities and resources the companies can produce something together that one companycould not achieve alone (Håkansson & Snehota 1995, Håkansson 2002).From the logic of two active parties interacting in order to create something it followsthat when applying the interaction approach on a buyer-seller dyad, there is a relationshipwhere two parties are active. When discussing value creation in such a context it is thenreasonable to assume that there are two parties actively involved in creating value throughinteracting in the relationship. There is not just one party creating value and the otherconsuming it, but two active parties co-creating value.Ramirez (1999) has started this discussion on value creation and provides analternative view on value to the pure industrial view. He introduced the idea of “ value coproduction”. In this alternative view the parties in a business relation are engaged in mutualvalue creation and re-creation (p. 50). Also Ulaga (2001) has acknowledged the thought ofvalue being produced jointly by the parties in a business relationship. Ramirez (1999) seesthe role of the customer to be one of the main differences between the two schools. Inindustrial value creation, customers are seen as “ destroying the value which producers hadcreated for them” , while in the alternative view customers are actively co-creating and recreatingvalue both with their suppliers and their own customers (p. 51). Basically the sameidea can be found in the business to consumer literature, where Prahalad et al. (2004) in a68