Value co-creation within “card game encounters” : Facilitating the customer and supplier learning processes through interaction

Marketing is on the path of evolving to a Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic perspective. S-D Logic researchers have acknowledged that customers do not only receive value, they contribute to create value and subjectively assess it in use - a notion that challenge the logic of traditional marketing. In interaction, suppliers have the opportunity to reveal processes of customer value creation, and accordingly, align these with its own internal processes. From this perspective, the supplier is turned into a co-creator of value. This study investigates the potentials of value co-creation, through interaction, within the context of card game encounters, an activity originally developed for traditional marketing purposes. Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB has implemented the method of the card game, and is now in search for academic support to identify the actual potentials of interaction within these encounters. By drawing on a literature review compromising (1) a conceptual model presenting the functions of direct interaction as a merging of processes (Grönroos & Voima 2013), and (2) a processed-based framework for co-creation of value (Payne et al. 2008), a qualitative study was conducted to investigate Atlas Copco employees’ perception of how supplier representatives and customers engage in learning process by co-creating value. The study provides guidance of how the supplier, through direct interaction, engages in the learning process through keeping a customer-oriented dialogue. Supplier representatives’ product-specific knowledge is operative to the comprehension of customer processes. It is also decisive for the organizational learning outcome from card game encounters. Statistical customer research with all due respect, however, interaction is the key to forming value propositions supporting real value creation. The study suggest an identification of mechanism supporting supplier and customer learning processes and show how supplier actions may influence the levels of customer learning within the context of discrete interactions. It suggests that customers’ (1) cognitive ability are to be supported in information search, (2) emotions are to be supported by recognition and appreciation and (3) behavioral elements of value creation are to be supported through the sharing of knowledge and skills