INTRODUCTION The term luxury usually defines not a category of products but a conceptual and symbolic set of dimensions. These dimensions comprise values that are strongly related to cultural elements and the wider socio-economic context (Vickers & Renand, 2003). Vickers and Renand (2003) recognised luxury goods as symbols of personal and social identity. Luxury is often used as a social marker, as a social stratification tool to reinforce a hierarchy (Okonkwo, 2010, Kapferer & Bastien, 2009). Due to the subjective nature of the luxury concepts and the complexity to define it, perceptions of luxury brands are not consistent across market segments and geographic locations (Phau & Prendergast, 2000), since they depend largely on each consumer's perception of indulgence. A common denominator between consumers in both Western and Eastern cultures is that the purchase of luxury brands serves to portray individuality and/or social standing (Nueno & Quelch, 1998; Vigneron & Johnson, 2004). Consumption of luxury brands is largely determined by social function attitudes (i.e. self-expression attitude and self-presentation attitude) as consumers express their individuality (e.g., need for uniqueness) and exhibits their social standing (e.g., self monitoring) through luxury brands (Wilcox et al., 2009). It is of growing importance for researchers and managers to understand how consumers' perceptions of value, influences buying criteria and behaviour (Tynan et al., 2010; Wiedmann, Hennigs, & Siebels, 2007). The perception of value by consumers is given a higher importance (Tynan et al., 2010) however the measurement of luxury value is not agreed amongst scholars and practitioners. Vigneron and Johnson (2004) proposed a structure of the luxury concept and presented the “brand luxury index” framework. Wiedmann et al. (2007) offered a conceptual model of luxury value perceptions highlighting four dimensions, namely: social, personal, functional, and financial values. Tynan et al. (2010) have adapted the earlier work by Smith and Colgate (2007) on generic value framework and suggested a conceptual model based on the following concepts: utilitarian, symbolic/ expressive, experiential/hedonic, relational, and cost/ sacrifice value. With the emergence of new concepts and levels of luxury, the measurement of value becomes even harder. According to Unity Marketing (2006) “…‘old luxury’ was about the attributes, qualities and features of the product and much of its appeal was derived from status and prestige. The new luxury consumer defines the category from their point of view. Today’s new luxury consumers focus on the experience of luxury embodied in the goods and services they buy, not in the ownership itself.” Robins and Ricca (2012) propose an alternative perspective on the established ‘new’ vs. ‘old’ luxury dichotomy. According to the authors, the more brands define themselves as belonging to the world of luxury, the more the concept becomes meaningless as luxury becomes ‘massified’. They introduce the concept of Meta-Luxury as a new form of luxury that escapes the cliché of luxury and establishes the “luxury beyond luxury”. In these complex scenarios, luxury brands are on a constant quest to remain relevant and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. According to Beverland (2004) marketers now need to use “a complex combination of dedication to product quality, a strong set of values, tacit understanding of marketing, a focus on detail, and strategic emergence” in order to effectively manage luxury brands. With the recent focus on co-creation of value, luxury brand management has evolved to include dialogue and complex interactions between the brand owner, employee, customers and other social groups and communities (Tynan et al. 2010) making success factors harder to track. Purpose This paper aims to conceptualize a measurement tool that could be used in the evaluation and classification of a luxury brand’s performance and to assess how these dimensions evolve as the brand moves from mature towards more emerging luxury markets. This paper seeks to make a contribution, by providing a systematic review of the definitions of a luxury brand provided by various authors. It seeks to establish patterns and inconsistencies and to summarise them in a performance measurement matrix (the LPM framework) which can be used to identify growth strategies and to support future managerial developments. Design/methodology/approach The methodological approach followed in this paper was to systematically review the academic literature on luxury brands and to reduce the numerous factors cited as components and identifiers of luxury brands to a more manageable number of macro-themes. Through the analysis of the dimensions identified (with a further distinction between ‘new’ and ‘old’ luxury brands), the researchers intended to clarify the key elements of success that impact on brands competitiveness, leading to the definition of the items in the scale. In order to validate the elements, a survey was implemented to identify the most crucial indicators by building on the results of the systematic review. The aim of the survey was to clarify detailed criteria for each of the dimensions in order to construct an effective measurement scale. The scale was tested on four luxury brands selected amongst those perceived as ‘old’ / traditional luxury and ‘new’/emergent luxury. Findings Amongst academics and practitioners there is no common agreement or clear parameters that delineate what luxury is or the strategies such brands employ. This leads to confusion in the definition of the elements that constitute a luxury brand as well as in the brand management process. This paper proposes an alternative measurement scale to the Brand Luxury Index Scale developed by Vigneron and Johnson by focusing on a strategic overview of the performance of luxury brands in the UK market. It attempts to evaluate the performances of key luxury players by using a value-curve approach (Kim and Mauborgne, 2005) as a measurement tool. The value curve is a both a diagnostic and an action tool which captures the current state of play in the market space. The different constituents of the proposed Luxury Performance Matrix (LPM) should be considered when measuring the performance of a luxury brand and its capacity for value creation. The visual representation of the LPM model, allows marketers and brand managers to easily evaluate what aspects and strategic directions should be prioritized. It also allows to capture the brand’s performance across the key competitive factors of the industry and to determine which factors need to be raised above competition as way to increase competitiveness in the marketplace. The Luxury Performance Matrix proposed in this paper represents a major contribution to the measurement and evaluation of the competitive performances of established and ‘new’ luxury brands, in mature and emerging markets. Originality/value The proposed matrix will allow luxury brand managers to assess the current presence in the marketplace and develop more in-depth understanding of the brand’s performance. The findings provide valuable strategic insights for luxury brands operating across emerging and established product/market contexts.

This study was designed to investigate luxury brand co-value creation. A mixed method approach was used to 1) identify encounter attributes of value co-creation, consumer value and brand value and 2) examine the relationships among encounter attributes, consumer value, brand value, and purchase intention to explain the process of value co-creation.

Purpose Two patterns of consumer value creation are commonly observed in literature: standardisation and customisation of products. An important value-creating feature of standard products is reduction of consumer costs, both direct (prices of standard products are lower) and indirect (costs of recognising, selecting and learning-to-use). Personalised production, on the contrary, is costly, but the decrease in value due to a complexity of choice and use is compensated by an additional value from the perfect fitting to THE consumer needs. Service industry, especially B2B services, provides a good example of personalisation. This paper focuses on marketing to study drivers and determinants of the successful value creation in an individualised service production. Incentives to provide bespoke services arise when it is impossible to sell a second copy (a replica) of previously provided services: the service should be personally tailored and tuned to the needs of a particular customer. Bespoke services cannot be properly produced without detailed information about THE customers’ needs; a common knowledge about a representative consumer is not sufficient in this case. Customised KIBS have two producers: first, the service provider, who inputs its intellectual human resources; second, the customer, whose input is information, i.e. knowledge about itself. This phenomenon is known as co-production. The value of a customised service is therefore added by consumer as well. Co-production adds value to the supplied item by transforming it from replica into a unique object. The purpose of the current paper is to analyse the mechanism of co-production in marketing services in order to identify the sources of the above mentioned inefficiencies. Methodology The study of marketing services is part of the broader study of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in Russia. Our methodology includes the study of observable patterns in KIBS sector performance with an objective to arrive at a better conceptual understanding of contemporary practices. We employ empirical data from 2007-13 obtained from specialised surveys of Russian executives who were asked to answer questions both on their own company and on market developments. The survey covers 600-800 producers of KIBS annually, and one tenth of them are suppliers of marketing services. Furthermore, in 2007, 2011 and in 2013 the survey involved over 700 business consumers of KIBS, of whom at least one third are users of marketing services. Marketing services involve a visible share of customised production (up to 70 per cent before the recent economic downturn), which makes them a convenient field for a research on individualised services. Original metrics of their knowledge intensity, level of customisation, customer involvement and customers’ absorptive capacity are the most important empirical outcomes of our surveys. Maim findings First, we argue that marketing services in Russia are highly knowledge intensive. The literature on KIBS usually proposes three main characteristic of knowledge intensity: 1) educational attainments of the workforce that are associated with the level of professional skills; 2) share of the value-added, and 3) share of customised services. With our original methodic we obtain quantitative metrics of all the three characteristics and prove high knowledge intensity of marketing services. Second, we present thorough investigation of provider-customer relations within service production. We provide original metrics of the intensity of customer co-production and show that the users of marketing services are deeply involved into co-production. We also demonstrate how the level of co-production fluctuates along the service production cycle to prove our hypothesis about positive relation between the intensity of customers’ involvement and their ability to add value to customised services. Third, we prove that value adding via co-production of marketing services is rarely absolutely efficient. The losses in efficiency results in value losses because proper customisation is impossible without perfect co-production, and insufficient co-production thus generates standard service instead of bespoke one. We reveal the sources of imperfect co-production and provide empirical evidence of their relative importance. Fourth, we demonstrate that value added through co-production can be lost due to incomplete absorption of the service. We provide evidence about imperfect absorptive capacity of Russian users of marketing services and expose its sources. We also discuss the relation between absorptive capacity and the general economic cycle in Russia. Research implications The study of co-production of marketing services may help their providers to optimise their customer strategy, to upgrade their value chains and to avoid value losses in their interaction with customers. More generally, the study improves our understanding of the bespoke production which takes the growing importance with the progress of post-industrial mode of production and life.

Although the SDL paradigm has contributed to the conceptualization of “value co-creation”, and despite the prioritization of sustainable marketing by business-to-business corporations, the academic literature has failed to study the role played by sustainability in business-to-business (BtoB) value co-creation. Here, using case studies, we examine how business-to-business companies embrace the concept of sustainability to co-create value, and we further develop the theory through a qualitative approach. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between the supplier and customer networks and how the SDL value co-creation translates into business-to-business offering. The customer network is first used by the supplier to create sustainability awareness among end users (social marketing) or to understand their behaviors, whereas the supplier network creates the fit with the customer or end-user expectations for sustainability by delivering a sustainable service targeting performance or supply chain integration (green marketing). The dichotomy between green and social marketing is of high interest for BtoB marketers as in vertical business relationships, upstream companies may implement green marketing but they cannot be certain their efforts will meet the needs of the end users as they have little to no direct contact with these users. Ross et al. (2011) define green marketing, as “companies applying sustainable thinking holistically, from production to post-purchasing service, aiming to balance the company’s need for profit with the wider need to protect the environment”. The authors also recognize that “while companies may do all they can to pursue a green marketing effort to contribute to sustainability, if consumers do not change their own behavior to become more sustainable then little will be achieved” (2011: 149). To overcome this potential hurdle they introduce the concept of “social marketing”, which can be defined as “the systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social or public good” (French and Blair-Stevens, 2006: 4). If we apply the SDL value co-creation model to this diachronic approach, splitting the production from the use of the product, and even looking at the use of the product across time (i.e., during the product life cycle), then we have to look at the network of actors involved in the different stages of this value co-creation model in a BtoB context. The SDL paradigm implicitly recognizes the value creation network (Lusch and Vargo, 2006), which can be defined as when “actors come together to co-produce value” (Norman and Ramirez, 1994). Cova and Salle (2008: 272) show that to translate the SDL into a BtoB offering, the supplier network must interact with the customer network, “thereby co-creating value with them and for them”. From there, we can suggest that a sustainable value proposition in BtoB will be the process by which companies link the supplier and the customer network while incorporating green and social marketing (Ross et al., 2011). Our findings improve and detail our understanding of this interaction between the supplier and customer networks.

The events industry continues to grow and is estimated to be worth around 30 billion dollars yearly involving more than 50 million trips worldwide. MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) offer opportunities for business networking, business development and customer loyalty, and are used for internal company purposes as well as for external commercial gain. However, capturing the value of any given MICE appears difficult and relatively little is known about how customers engage in co-creation and there are few models or frameworks. Moreover, dyadic encounter and value from a provider perspective ignore the measurement of customer value in multi-actor service encounters. The research questions posed by this study were therefore: How do multi-actor service encounters differ from dyadic ones? Do current value frameworks capture all the value created in these encounters? And how can multi-actor service providers increase customer value? To address these questions, we embarked on a qualitative study with 35 actors (attendees, organizers, speakers) from networking events, using a service-dominant logic approach to conceptualizing customer perceived value from networking events. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies to address the joint creation of value in service encounters characterised by multiple providers (provider network approach) and multiple customers (customer group approach) at the same time and studied from the perspectives of both sides. In answering our first research question of how do multi-actor service encounters different from dyadic ones, we first identify several characteristics that define multi-actor services and compare them to traditional one-to-one services. Our second research question asked whether current value taxonomies capture all the value created in these encounters and we conceptualised the dimensions of event value (social, professional, learning, emotional and hedonic), and show how these relate to existing value taxonomies, as well as highlighting professional value which is new and novel to event encounters. Thirdly, in answering how multi-actor service providers can increase customer value, we supplement previous research on customer value from the providers’ view by adding how the design and execution of service impacts customer value. From this managerial perspective, our study brings new perspectives for event management in understanding when and where value is created and therefore when and how it should be measured. In terms of assessing interaction and engagement, we have found that few practices are in place. We suggest that observation within an event setting could be complemented by video recording.

Introduction Recent research in management and marketing has focused on the concept of value cocreation, and numerous attempts have been made by scholars to clarify the essence and process of value cocreation according to the service-dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch 2006). The value cocreation perspective is substantially different from the traditional value creation perspective in the following two respects. First, while in the value creation perspective the seller or firm is the initiator of value creation and value proposition, the value cocreation perspective considers both the buyer or consumer and the seller or firm to be value-creating actors (Vargo & Lusch 2006). Second, the value cocreation perspective focuses on the fact that value is cocreated through interaction between the seller and buyer, or company and consumer (Vargo & Lusch 2006). The purpose of this paper is to (1) analyze the case of ‘COOKPAD’, the top recipe site in Japan, as a platform for value cocreation, (2) consider the relationship between firms and consumers in the value cocreation process, and (3) draw some theoretical insights on value cocreation, open innovation, and service innovation. While tremendous progress has been made in these research fields, little is known about the ‘platform’ of value cocreation. This paper will focus specifically on the function of ‘platform’ in value cocreation. Case analysis of COOKPAD COOKPAD has following three theoretical features. First, COOKPAD is a service provider, which is thought to be more likely to cocreate value with consumers than goods manufacturing companies (Grönroos 2011). Second, it is an online service provider that operates in an environment where a higher number of consumers are likely to become involved in the value cocreation process. And thirdly, it is a leading-edge case that could provide new theoretical knowledge to the existing theories on value cocreation, open innovation, and service innovation. Overview COOKPAD Inc. was founded in 1997 by an entrepreneur Akimitsu Sano, and the Internet site called ‘COOKPAD’ became the most popular recipe site in Japan in a very short period. In accordance with the corporate mission of ‘making everyday cooking fun,’ it allows users to upload and search through original, user-created recipes. In July 2013, COOKPAD had more than 1.5 million registered recipes, a total of 20 million users, and over 1 million paid subscription users. Currently, it is being used by almost 80-90% of all Japanese women in their 20-30s (COOKPAD 2014). Combined with its mobile and smartphone services which can be used on the go and in stores, COOKPAD plays an influential role in the shopping decisions that consumers make in their everyday lives. Business Model COOKPAD has two revenue-generating businesses. One is a ‘premium service’ business aimed at consumers, and the second business is advertising aimed at food manufacturers (Uesaka 2009). COOKPAD users can search through a large database of recipes using search options such as ingredients, menu, and keywords. Free users can view the recipes, but for them the functionality of the service is more limited. ‘Premium service’ members (a paid service costing ¥294 per month) have access to value-added services such as ‘MY kitchen’ and ‘MY folder’. ‘MY kitchen’ allows a member to upload a recipe with a self-made photo of the food, check the traffic to the recipe, and browse the feedback to the recipe from other paying members. Paying members can also save their favorite recipes in ‘MY folder’, can register their favorite recipe-posting members, and search for new recipes posted by these members. The company’s advertising business offers corporate clients the option to display clickable ads and also runs recipe contests. Its advertising clients include food and beverage manufacturers, and the service aims at enhancing the awareness of client products and services and at enhancing consumer knowledge on how to use these products. More specifically, COOKPAD provides food companies with a virtual space or ‘platform’ to hold recipe contests and to promote their products by inviting users to create recipes for these products. COOKPAD’s cocreated value The value cocreation process of COOKPAD has two aspects. The first is in the relationship with consumers. Consumers upload their vaunted recipes to COOKPAD, and derive great satisfaction from providing other consumers with value by having these other consumers browse and use these recipes. A series of customer experiences (searching for recipes, cooking, uploading recipe) on COOKPAD results in customer satisfaction. The important point here is that consumers are actors who cocreate value in a multilateral and interactional fashion through browsing and uploading of each other’s recipes, while usual cookbooks produced by professionals create value in a unilateral fashion. Therefore, COOKPAD is an interactive platform that promotes value cocreation among consumers. The second aspect is in the relationship with food manufacturers. Usually, food manufacturers try to take in customers’ needs through group interviews and/or consumer surveys to develop more appealing products or services. However, although customer needs may be incorporated in the product development process, it is arguably the food manufacturer that creates value in the form of food products. Also, it is usually the manufacturers who propose recipes using their ingredients to consumers on their websites, and, in this case, they use the website as a one-way communication channel for their products. In contrast, COOKPAD plays not only the role of a platform where food manufacturers place Internet advertisements, but they can also ask consumers for ideas on how to use the ingredients in the form of ‘recipe contests’. In the case of COOKPAD the value-creating actors are not the food manufacturers that strategically promote the usage of their ingredients, but instead it is the consumers —usually considered value receivers in the goods-dominant logic— who perform this role. The value cocreation on COOKPAD is based on the fact that it is a platform connecting two markets. Platform is defined as the tool and/or system that functions as a communication infrastructure promoting cooperation among multiple types of actors (Kokuryo & Platform Design Lab 2011). Applying this definition to COOKPAD, the multiple types of actors are the many consumers and food manufacturers using the COOKPAD website, the interactive cocreation among these actors embodies the cooperation aspect, and the COOKPAD website is the platform that provides the communication infrastructure that enables the cocreation process. COOKPAD in fact consists of two platforms: a platform of consumers and a platform of food manufacturers. This type of platform has been called a two-sided platform where products and services are brought together by groups of users in two-sided networks (Eisenmann, Parker, & Van Alstyne 2006). In a two-sided platform two unique effects appear, namely same-side network effects and cross-sided network effects. Same-side network effects “are created when drawing users to one side helps attract even more users to that side” (Eisenmann, Parker, & Van Alstyne 2006, p.96). On COOKPAD’s platform, a large number of consumers upload various recipes, and more consumers who are attracted to the variety of recipes start to use them. The cross-side network effects are generated “if the platform provider can attract enough subsidy-side users, money-side users will pay handsomely to reach them” (Eisenmann, Parker, & Van Alstyne 2006, p.96). Indeed, in the case of COOKPAD, the large number of subsidy-side consumers attracts money-side food manufacturers to the platform who are willing to pay the advertisement rates to reach those consumers. Theoretical insights from the case Based on the COOKPAD business model, we would like to propose some theoretical insights to existing research in value cocreation, open innovation, and service innovation. First, the situation in which consumers actively engage in value cocreation and generate product innovation has been understood as ‘user innovation’. The users engaging in innovation are called ‘lead users’. Lead users are defined as those who have advanced knowledge related to a specific field, participate in product development and the service provision process, and cocreate value with firms (von Hippel 1988). This means that in this case the value cocreation is limited to lead users who are able to generate user innovation. The important point here is that users who cocreate value on COOKPAD are not lead users with advanced cooking knowledge, but amateurs in cooking, which is different from the premise of user innovation theory. COOKPAD functions as a platform that accumulates numerous knowledge resources on cooking by connecting these ordinary consumers and food manufacturers. Therefore, COOKPAD can be positioned as a value cocreation platform integrating consumers’ resources. Secondly, this feature of COOKPAD provides an important implication for research on open innovation. Open innovation is defined as the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and to expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively (Chesbrough 2006). The value cocreation platform of COOKPAD is the very infrastructure that invokes open innovation. And this aspect represents a strategy that is completely opposite to the strategy of developing a solid customer base by enclosing good customers and gaining higher profit, as typified by CRM (costumer relationship management). COOKPAD develops a relationship for cocreating values with a large indefinite number of consumers and reaps profit from paying members who are highly loyal to it. And thirdly, in association with the value creation network, the network has been considered in the concepts of value constellation (Norman & Ramírez 1993) and value network (Lusch, Vargo, & Tanniru 2010), and both of these concepts focus on the network of value-creating actors and the relationship in which the actors create one value. However, the COOKPAD platform goes beyond these concepts in the sense that recipes as cocreated values are generated emergently through consumers’ positive commitment to value cocreation. COOKPAD invoking open innovation includes a possibility of emergent value cocreation. Emergence is defined as a phenomenon in which unpredictable value added can be generated through interaction among multiple actors (Kokukyo & Platform Design Lab 2011, p.260). Both COOKPAD and consumers are not able to predict in advance what kind of value-added recipes will be uploaded, and food manufacturers cannot foresee what kind of recipes will be submitted in recipe contests. Recipes as cocreated value cannot be determined in advance, and thereby, COOKPAD is also a platform with a post-emergent process, which means a process in which the value that customers experience is not determined in advance by both firms and consumers, and the real value only becomes apparent for the first time during the use process (Ono et al. 2014). Conclusion As we analyzed above, COOKPAD has unique features in three ways. Firstly, it is a platform in which all values are generated by a cocreation process between consumers and firms. Secondly, the innovation on COOKPAD has a character of open innovation by numerous amateur consumers. Thirdly, the innovation cannot be fully determined in advance by COOKPAD, food manufacturers, and consumers. We believe we will be able to contribute to research on value cocreation, open innovation, and service innovation by further exploring the case of COOKPAD.

Within last 10 years, internet has become a daily activity, and humankind had to face the Data Deluge, a dramatic increase of digital data (Economist 2012). Due to exponential increase in amount of digital data, large scale data has become a big issue and hence the term 'big data' appeared. There is no official agreement in quantitative and detailed definition of the 'big data', but the meaning is expanding to its value and efficacy. Big data not only has the standardized personal information (internal) like customer information, but also has complex data of external, atypical, social, and real time data. Big data's technology has the concept that covers wide range technology, including 'data achievement, save/manage, analysis, and application'. To define the connected technology of 'big data', there are Big Table, Cassandra, Hadoop, MapReduce, Hbase, and NoSQL, and for the sub-techniques, Text Mining, Opinion Mining, Social Network Analysis, Cluster Analysis are gaining attention. The three features that 'bid data' needs to have is about creating large amounts of individual elements (high-resolution) to variety of high-frequency data. Big data has three defining features of volume, variety, and velocity, which is called the '3V'. There is increase in complexity as the 4th feature, and as all 4features are satisfied, it becomes more suitable to a 'big data'. In this study, we have looked at various reasons why companies need to impose 'big data', ways of application, and advanced cases of domestic and foreign applications. To correspond effectively to 'big data' revolution, paradigm shift in areas of data production, distribution, and consumption is needed, and insight of unfolding and preparing future business by considering the unpredictable market of technology, industry environment, and flow of social demand is desperately needed.

Purpose: It suggests that making a policy and strategies in a way of AI and its impact of commercialization on economic efficiency, social custom ethics. Research design, data, and methodology: The paper has analyzed the data based on the proposed model when derived as AI vs. FI job, etc. It is very different for each professional evaluation, which is artificial intelligence or robot job. One concept case was selected as a substitute job, with a relatively low level of occupation ability, such as direct labors, easily replaced. By the induction data has resulted in modeling. Results: The paper suggests that AI at high level become something how to make real decisions on ethical value modeling. Through physical simulation with the deduction data, it can be tuned to design and control what has not been solved, from human senses to climate. Conclusion: For the exploiting of new AI decision-making jobs in markets, the deduction data is possible to prove to AI’s Decision-making that the percentage who can easily have different leadership as is different for each person. what is generated by some information silos may be applied to occupation societies. The empirical results indicate the deduction data that if AI determines ethical decisions (VC) for that modifications, it may replace future jobs.