Managing strategic accounts with empowerment and management support for co-creation of value

This study explores managing strategic accounts for co-creation of value, and the utility of management input to account plans and empowering account managers. In recent years, managing strategic accounts (SA) has progressed towards relationship-building with customer relationship management (CRM) and use of service-dominant logic (SDL) for co-creation of value. However, there is limited data regarding managing SA with empowerment and management support for co-creation of value. Accordingly, this research aims to appraise the functions of managing SA with empowerment and management support for co-creation of value. Aligning with a pragmatic research philosophy, semi-structured interviews (n=12) were selected with mixed demographics. Participants were primarily strategic account managers (SAMs) from a variety of business sectors. Thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts to arrive at key issues and themes. The findings imply that the emphasis of managing SA has progressed into a value-creating account relations management approach. Empowerment and support from senior management were felt to be important to SAMs. This study shows the importance of management support and empowerment for successful strategic account management that creates value for both customer and supplier.N/A