What's in it for me? A qualitative study of consumers’ sensemaking and value creation using mobile location-based service retail applications

The research on digitalisation has experienced a shift in the last decade, and animportant facilitator of the effects of business World digitalisation is the increased use of mobile devices. Furthermore, research on value creation has also gone through changes recently. Although much value research has been conducted, there is a gap in retail digitalisation research and the consumers’ interaction and sensemaking of digital devices in a retailing environment. The aim of this study was to add to research on sensemaking and value creation in the context of digitalisation by investigating its impact on usage of mobile locationbased services retail (LBS) applications as a facilitator for value co-creation. To fulfil the purpose, a hermeneutic analysis was performed on a qualitative case study of a mobile LBS retail application. The results show that primarily belief-driven sensemaking affects consumers’ willingness to change and co-create value. Consumer identity and beliefs in particular affect the value co-creation process. Furthermore, it shows that complex information hinders sensemaking processes, leading to nega- tive emotions and preventing co-creation of value. Knowledge about this is im- portant to those who work to adopt digitalisation in their own retail context, and for those who wish to expand the horizons of sensemaking