Interpreting the score: participant experiences of value co-creation in a collaborative consumption context

Traditionally, service marketing scholars and organisations have tacitly conceptualised value co-creation as a set of processes or activities where participants know how to act, or „know the score‟ – however, this is not always the case. This dissertation questions such conceptualisations; in particular Service-Dominant (SD) logic‟s tenth foundational premise (FP10) which states that value is uniquely and phenomenologically determined by consumers, and argues for a greater consideration of the wider socio-cultural context from which value emerges. In order to address this gap, this is the first grounded study of value as it arises from multiple practices in a collaborative consumption context, specifically orchestral consumption. Framed by a relational constructionist approach, the study explores how multiple participants – musicians, conductors, audience members, and staff – experience value co-creation in the context of their participation in 47 orchestral, educational and outreach events facilitated by the London Symphony Orchestra. Participant narratives were collected using 47 depth interviews, 375 short interviews, and non participant netnography over a six month period. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, 20 value co-creation practices and 13 value experiences were induced from the data. The research integrates experiential and practice based perspectives of value by illustrating that value emerges from the shared understandings between conductors (service organisation managers) and participants (regular, novice and potential service consumers, front and back office service personnel and other service providers within a service value network) participating in a multiplicity of value co-creation practices. Value co-creation practices maintain, sustain and reinforce the sacred on behalf of participants and frame their experiences. Co-creating value therefore requires service organisations to deconsecrate or „open up the score‟ for novice participants; specifically, to share the understandings, engagements, and procedures embedded in such practices. These concern not just how-to-act but also how-to-interpret, which in turn may be negatively experienced by expert participants. The dissertation concludes with a proposed refinement of SD logic‟s FP10: namely, that value is both socially constructed and intersubjectively and phenomenologically determined.