Improving business-to-business relationships: co-creating value through end-user development

Due to the limited resources of small and medium enterprises in the business-to-business domain, consultants are not always the answer to every request of customers. Suppliers can not dedicate consultants to satisfy all customers, and customers have finite resources to spend on consultants. Value co-creation is a method popular in business-to-consumer markets to engage customers in the value creation process by leveraging a form of end-user development. The current value co-creation framework is targeted towards business-to-consumer markets, and does not detail the encounters between suppliers and customers. Therefore, it is unclear whether value co-creation is a viable method for the business-to-business market. This research sets out to identify if value co-creation through end-user development is a viable method for suppliers to improve their relationships with customers. This research extends the value co-creation framework by further defining the encounters between suppliers and customers in the value co-creation engagement model. The value co-creation engagement model provides suppliers with a method to identify the viability of value co-creation, and helps to design an end-user development solution for their environment