Users' Involvement in Value Co‐Creation: The More the Better?

• Author: Faïz Gallouj,Faridah Djellal,Benoît Desmarchelier
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12365
• Date: 01 June 2020
• Published date: 01 June 2020

Users’Involvement in Value Co‐Creation: The

More the Better?

BENOÎT DESMARCHELIER,FARIDAH DJELLAL and FAÏZ GALLOUJ

The University of Lille, cite scientifique, 59655, Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France

Literature on value co‐creation often postulates that a greater degree of co‐production increases the potential of

value co‐creation. To test this hypothesis, we build a computational model of value proposition inspired by March’s

model of organizational learning. The model allows us to represent various cases of co‐creation: (i) without co‐

production, (ii) with downstream co‐production, and (iii) with upstream co‐production. Repeated simulations are

partly supporting the literature. On one hand, we find that deeper involvement of consumers into the value offering

process increases the potential for value co‐creation. One the other hand, we find that co‐production can increase

inequalities of satisfaction among consumers. Also, while scenarios with learning consumers offer the highest

potential for value co‐creation, a negative relationship emerges between the number of learning consumers and

organizational performance.

Keywords: Value co‐creation; organizational learning; modelling

Introduction

All adaptive systems include performance measures used

by microeconomic agents to make decisions (Holland

and Miller, 1991; Holland, 1975). Companies are no

different. They use a wide and evolving variety of such

measures: profit, market share, return on equity, etc. A

new one that is being advocated by scholars of service

science is value co‐creation, that is, the satisfaction

experienced by consumers while they are usingthe goods

or services they bought (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Vargo

et al. (2008) argue that previous performance indicators

were based on prices, thus fundamentally on a criterion

of ‘exchange value’, while the co‐creation approach

focuses on the idea of ‘use‐value’. In this new framework,

companies are not selling products, but a proposition of

value consisting in ‘a clear, simple statement of the

benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the company

will provide’(Lanning & Michaels, 1988). This promise

becomes actual value once a consumer bought the

product, experienced it and compared the resulting

satisfaction felt with the initial promise (Vargo et al.,

2008).While use‐value is necessarily co‐created, the value

offering does not need to be co‐produced. Indeed,

consumers can always formulate a judgment about an

offering, regardless of their level of involvement in its

making process. On this respect, Ballantyne et al.(2011)

and Osborne and Strokosch (2013) –among others –

suggested that the potential of value co‐creation is higher

when co‐production deepens. This hypothesis is

debatable. Organizations are complex systems made of

numerous and highly interdependent actors (Carley and

Hill, 2001), whose capacity of adaptation is also

influenced by pre‐existing routines (Nelson and Winter,

1982). In a learning perspective, co‐producing the value

offering may confront employees to contradictions

between consumers’aspirations and the practices and

values of their organization. Such contradiction may

hamper adequate customization of the offering, therefore

reducing its use‐value potential.The relationship between

co‐production of the offering and co‐creation of the use‐

value is thus not straightforward. It needs to be tested. In

this paper, we investigate this question by building‐on a

simulation model of organizational learning and value

co‐creation in various configurations of coproduction.

Repeated simulations partly confirm thehypothesis found

in the co‐creation literature. Indeed, we find that deeper

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very

insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

This paper draws on a research carried out within the

Co‐Val project, funded by the European Commission

under the Horizon 2020 framework (funding number

770356).

Correspondence: Benoît Desmarchelier, The University of

Lille, cite scientifique, 59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France.

E‐mail benoit.desmarchelier@univ‐lille.fr

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12365

© 2019 European Aca demy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 17, –

439 448, (2020)