With the digitalization of production and consumption environments, consumers are no longer merely targets of marketing, but key players in creating value jointly with companies by participating in various decision-making processes. Much virtual content in particular, such as fashion shows, exhibitions, games, social activities, and shopping, which fashion brands implement in virtual worlds, cannot be completed without consumers’ active engagement and interaction. Thus, this study considers consumers’ participation in virtual content provided by fashion brands as value co-creation in virtual worlds. This study aims to examine how consumer (i.e., consumer smartness) and fashion firm (i.e., perceived intellectual capital) factors influence value co-creation behavior intention in virtual worlds. Data were collected from 410 consumers in their 20s nationwide through an online survey, and a higher-order structural equation modeling analysis was conducted to test the research model. The results showed that both consumer smartness and perceived intellectual capital positively influenced customer participation behavior and citizenship behavior intentions. Specifically, perceived intellectual capital had a greater impact on value co-creation behavior in the virtual world than consumer smartness. The findings provide empirical evidence that the fashion firms’ intangible assets and consumers’ competence in the digital shopping environment encourage their intentions to co-create value in virtual worlds.

NFTs are touted as revolutionary to market and monetize digital assets. However, critics have questioned NFT value, labeling it as fraudulent. Despite mixed reviews, various firms are leveraging NFTs as a value proposition for customers. In this study, using service-dominant (S-D) logic, we explore how NFTs can help firms in value co-creation and service exchange. We propose and test a conceptual framework using a multi-method approach -1) we investigate NFTs popularity using historical news articles spanning ten years, 2) we use a case study to examine business NFT use in value co-creation and service exchange, subsequently, proposing a conceptual framework illustrating such value exchange, 3) we test our conceptual framework by analyzing data from multiple sources, including surveys, online forums, social media, and transactions. Results from our study, provide business valuable insight into using NFTs as value co-creation and service exchange tool.

With the rise of social media platforms, influencer marketing has become an essential tool for marketers to promote their products and services. Value co-creation behavior of influencers involves collaborating with their followers and brands to create content that provides value to their audience. This approach can help to build stronger relationships with followers and drive engagement and sales for the brands they work with.

An important segment, tourism e-commerce live streaming (TEcLS) has emerged as a new marketing channel actively embraced by destination marketing organizations (DMO) and tourist firms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. China, Japan, Australia, and many other nations have been selling such tourism products on various platforms. Live e-commerce generates a real-time interactive virtual environment that can be called a livescape. However, many tourism destinations or companies are unaware of the marketing science implications of live streaming and are unsure of their effectiveness or the intricacies of marketing live streaming. Previous research has explored the factors influencing consumer purchase behavior from the product, technology, and live-streamer perspectives, arguing that the advantages of breaking through time and space constraints, strong interactivity, the experience of reality, technological ease of use and usefulness, and celebrity aura encourage online purchases. However, limited investigation has been carried out on the impact of customers’ value-co-creation in livescape when watching tourism live streaming on their purchase intentions considering the key role of engagement. This calls for specific investigation of the phenomenon to facilitate live streaming design and tourism marketing. This study aims to explores the factors influencing consumer purchase intentions in the livescape based on a value co-creation research framework. Compared to traditional e-commerce, livescapes provides the “many-to-many” social presence and an immersive value co-creation platform. Thus, we focus on why and how social presence inspires customer engagement, ultimately leading to purchase intentions. This study finds that, as a crucial marketing tool, the social presence of tourism livescapes can promotes customer engagement, which in turn results in intentions to purchase tourism live-streaming products. Additionally, the mediating role of inspiration (inspired-by and inspired-to) between social presence and customer engagement is examined to reveal the influence mechanism in the tourism context. Finally, this study examines how to create an effective tourism livescape to enhance tourists social presence experience and inspire their engagement, which in turn increases their purchase intention.

Customer value co-creation behavior (CVCB) has been regarded as a strong predictor of firm performance in many industries for decades. CVCB—the customer’s direct and indirect contribution of resources to enhance the offering of the focal agent/object—is ubiquitous in service industries. Recently, customer engagement has been identified as a determinant of the value realized by customers and businesses. Customer psychological engagement (CPEngagement) is a multidimensional customer-firm relationship marked by customer satisfaction and emotional connectedness to the firm. Although there is concurrence that customer engagement and CVCB are linked, scholars diverge as to the precise nature of the relationship. Marketing and hospitality literature have not yet developed an integrated model of customer engagement with the digital and physical components of hospitality services. Given the increasing managerial interest in digital customer engagement and value co-creation behaviors, it is essential to enhance our understanding of the interplay between these concepts and their implications for both consumers and businesses. This research investigates the relationship between CPEngagement and value co-creation in the digital and physical aspects of hospitality services.

Despite a surging amount of research on value co-creation in the social media context, research on how value co-creation and value co-destruction coexist from a system perspective remains scarce. This conceptual research aims to understand how social media allows for value to be co-created and/or co-destroyed in interconnected social networks. The study takes a first step toward integrating the two value processes in the social media context and opens up new research possibilities. By looking at value co-creation, we differentiate between values that are created from both firm and customer sides and show the value can be destructed if without cautions. From a managerial standpoint, the proposed framework could facilitate managers to build a more holistic view of creating social media value through collaboration with their social media users.

Internet of Things (IoT) research is devoted to the idea that a wide array of devices, including appliances, vehicles, buildings, and cameras, can be interconnected to collect and share their abundant sensory information to use for intelligent purposes. IoT technologies are universally seen as transforming the manufacturing and services sectors. Service-Dominant (S-D) logic focuses on a dynamic, ongoing way to co-create value through resource integration and service exchange. Based on research data from business-to-business and business-to-government customers, as well as feedback from employees and managers of two different manufacturers, our study addresses four questions: (1) In the light of the IoT-does the second axiom of the S-D logic—value is co-created by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary—still hold true for B-to-B and Business-to-Government (B-to-G) customers? (2)With reference to the IoT—is there a difference in the acceptance of digital services between B-to-B and B-to-G groups? Does the age group of the customers have to be considered? (3) Are there digital customer services already perceived as being ―co-created‖ in the sense of the S-D logic? (4) Marketing management in the digital age—how to implement IoT projects in buyer-manufacturer relationships considering the abovementioned chances and challenges. Discussing a background of disruption management and S-D logic, we examine factors that influence IoT buyer–manufacturer project success in organizational networks, and compare the attitude of different customer groups towards these projects. Our findings show that in the IoT-driven digital projects even long term customers that trust in their manufacturers have very strong reservations with regards to data safety. We propose a modular concept of a relationship alignment model to enhance trust in manufacturer's credibility in the context of disruptive IoT projects. The evaluation of our empirical studies revealed serious reservations of managers and service employees towards an active integration of customers into digital product maintenance. If manufacturers are not willing to incorporate customers in digital platforms and networks and provide them with digital services they are interested in, this will hamper A-to-A co-creation of value in digital IoT projects.

Tourism and hospitality service providers have been seeking ways to engage customers into the value creation process to deliver personalized customer experience. Rapid development of information communication technology has facilitated such practice by providing various computer-based or mobile platforms. While online platforms such as social network sites and online communities have received most research attention, mobile instant messaging (IM) remains under-researched in spite of its unique potential for firm-customer interaction and communication. Based on service-dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004) and computer-mediated communication theories (Walther, 1996), this study examines (1) the factors influencing customers’ perceived co-creation experience facilitated by mobile IM, and (2) customers’ perceived value of personalization results from such experience in the tourism and hospitality context. Data was collected via online survey targeting Chinese users and was analyzed using structural equation modelling. The results found significant positive effects of users’ perceived social presence, perceived media richness and prior experiences on their co-creation experience. The significant positive relationships between customers’ co-creation experience and perceived personalization of the service offering validate the unique potential of mobile IM to engage customers into value co-creation with tourism and hospitality service providers. The findings extend the theoretical framework of value cocreation to a context mediated by mobile IM. Managerial suggestions are provided for tourism and hospitality companies to engage with customers using mobile IM.

With the advent of globalization and the accompanying rapid changes in economic environments, firms have gradually transformed their mode of operations from one based on the traditional good-dominant logic to one based on service-dominant logic. The emergence of service-dominant logic has resulted in the development of value co-creation, which refers to the process through which firms, suppliers, and customers all become involved in the discovery and creation of product value and create added value through even and reasonable distribution. Drawing upon the SDT theory, the current study has the following three research objectives. First, the current study investigated the influence of transformational leadership on employee-based value co-creation and the impact of transformational leadership on employees’ intrinsic motivation to further enhance their value co-creation. Second, this study sought to understand the mediating mechanisms between transformational leadership and employee-based value co-creation; financial and non-financial variables were used as the mediators to explore whether the financial incentive affects employees’ intrinsic motivational process with regard to the transformational leadership that leads to employees’ intrinsic motivation. Third, positive psychological capital was used as a mediator to examine whether it mediates the relationship between the financial perspective and value co-creation. Fourth, self-concordance was also adopted to examine whether self-concordance mediates the relationship between the financial perspective and value co-creation. We collected 513 survey responses from 81 teams in firms from diverse industries in Taiwan. The present study makes the following contributions. First, previous research related to leadership behavior primarily focused on the influences of leadership behaviors on employee attitudes and behaviors. Only a few studies addressed the impact of leadership on value co-creation. Drawing on the self-determination theory to build our research framework, our study contributes to the field by investigating how transformational leadership stimulates employee-based value co-creation. Second, the present study investigated the psychological mechanisms involved in the motivational process in the context of the ways in which transformational leadership facilitates changes in employee behavior, particularly for employees’ intrinsic motivation. Third, the present study proved that financial and non-financial incentives respectively mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and positive psychological capital. Additionally, both financial and non-financial incentives mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and self-concordance. These results suggest that both financial and non-financial incentives could be effective ways for transformational leaders to intrinsically motivate their employees. These findings are valuable contributions to the leadership studies field. Fourth, the present study adopted hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to conduct a multi-level analysis of the relationship between transformational leadership and value co-creation.

Mobile shopping motivations affects the interaction between mobile shoppers and mobile retailers. This study examines how mobile shopping motivations affect value co-creation, customer equity drivers, and customer lifetime value through a structural equation model. Mobile shopping motivations as mobile shoppers’ needs are time saving, right purchase and money saving. To meet mobile shoppers’ needs, mobile shoppers, mobile retailers, and other customers are willing to collaborate. Value co-creation that Yi and Gong (2013) scaled includes customer participation behaviour such as information seeking, information sharing, responsible behaviour, and personal interaction, and customer citizenship behaviour such as feedback, helping, advocacy, and tolerance. The results indicate that mobile shopping motivations are significant determinants of value co-creation behaviours, implying that mobile shopping motivations are driving factors of value co-creation. Customer participation behaviour has significant effects on value equity and brand equity while customer citizenship behaviour shows positive effects on brand equity and relationship. As for customer lifetime value, relationship equity has significant positive effect, while value and brand equity had no significant influence. This study also shows that mobile shopping motivations affect both value equity and relationship equity of mobile shopping apps by improving information sharing, responsible behaviour, and personal interaction, feedback, helping, and advocacy. Value equity and relationship equity also have significant effects on customer lifetime value. The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications for their findings.

With the rapid development of network economy and information technology, customers through the internet platform to participate in product development and innovation, dominant the spread of value proposition engagement spread, etc., has become an important part of the creation of customer assets, as well as a profound change in brand management. This paper constructs a model of how the brand experience affects customer assets in the virtual branding community under the perspective of value co-creation, analysis the impact of value co-creation of customer participation (sponsored value co-creation and autonomous value co-creation), the motivation of value co-creation on brand experience, and then on customer assets. This paper also explores the regulatory effect of value proposition engagement in brand experience and customer asset. This study will use the involvement theory and the theory of stimulus-response for empirical research, and through the questionnaire survey of consumers, using SPSS20.0 and AMOS20.0 statistical software on the relevance of relevant variables to grasp, and carries on the analysis using structural equation model. The research of this paper will enrich the exposition and explanation of building a brand experience better through value co-creation in virtual brand community, and provide theoretical support and practical advice for the implementation and management of customer assets.

The service setting is more than ever dynamic. Customers’ engagement is changing due to the multiple interactions at different levels of the consumption experience journey. The customer as an active and engaged value co-creator raises new challenges to theory and practice. However, the connection between engagement and co-creation is scarce in the literature. The experience of the active hotel customer occurs through customer engagement with internal actors and factors from prepurchase through to post-purchase. Since value co-creation results from the engagement of multiple factors and actors (f/actors) in the process, it is essential to understand the actors’ activities that promote or obstruct this process. This paper proposes a connection between customer engagement (CE) and value co-creation framework to ascertain and depict the internal actors’ activities and factors that foster or hinder customers’ experience in the hotel industry. The researchers used qualitative methods (35 in-depth interviews, document analysis and 4 observation sessions) in seven regions in Ghana to explore the customer’s perspective. Data was analysed with Nvivo11, within a thematic analysis framework. Findings suggest that customer’s engagement within the hotel environment with multiple actors has an influence on customer value co-creation/destruction process. It found that positive and negative engagement fosters/hinders guests’ interactions which lead to value cocreation/ destruction. The research also discovered that negative interactions occasioned by any factor/actor triggers value destruction at multiple stages of the experience journey. The study suggests theoretical and managerial implications focused on the actors’ practices that foster or hinder customer engagement and value co-creation.

This study focuses on the digital generation in China and their engagement in social media to co-create values with firms. The study employed a qualitative research approach to first develop a social media co-creation value scale. This was followed by motivational analysis of social media engagement to co-create values. A spectrum of utilitarian and hedonic motives related to value co-creation behaviors via social media were then identified. Many theoretical and practical implications are provided based on the study findings.