Value network design for cluster SMEs service innovation: a customer- driven and imagery based approach

Evolution of the global economic system has significantly impacted on customer behaviors. The service economy era has accompanied rapid growth of the service industry. This work focuses on service innovation enhancement for cluster SMEs, which play important roles in the global economic system. These SMEs, which have specific knowledge and capabilities, are keys to improving customer service experiences. However, the entire service system has evolved, as have customer behaviors. In addition to understanding how service value is created, interactions between economic, social, and environmental systems during value creation are also crucial for the sustainable development of service industries. For service systems consisting of SMEs, the design of a value network for clustered SMEs still faces huge challenges in finding key value propositions and assessments for value creation. To assess service value, relationships, and customer feedback from both economic and social psychology perspectives, this research proposes a novel service ecosystem for value creation in service dominant logic and customer-driven and imagery-based value network design approach (CIVNDA) grounded in service dominant logic and image theory. The CIVNDA (1) provides a framework for designing and configuring a service value network that can identify the roles and value propositions of each partner; (2) provides a novel service imagery representation to characterize services of businesses from a customer psychological perspective; and (3) generates appropriate partners for specific cooperation goals and service journey designs. Due to the importance of information technology in service innovation, integration, and provision, this research also implements an ICT-based service platform—uVoyage using color image scale and metaphor theory. Tourism is selected as the study industry to evaluate the effects of the CIVNDA and the uVoyage service platform. Interview and focus group results (1) show that four different evolutionary stages of tourism SMEs exist when adapting to the current service economy era; (2) indicate how the CIVNDA and uVoyage platform facilitate value co-creation for tourism SMEs during different evolutionary stages; and (3) demonstrate how the features of service imagery differ from brand images and can be utilized to bridge gaps between product design and customer-driven service design. This research can contribute to our understanding of service system ecology and service value evaluation in service value network designs consisting of SMEs in the tourism, design, cultural, and creativity service industries. The proposed concept of service imagery also guides future innovative research and outcomes of service value network design