Value Co-Creation Process: Reconciling S-D Logic of Marketing and Consumer Culture Theory within the Co-Consuming Group

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how individual consumers negotiate in the collective community in order to co-create value. By making use of the concepts of ‘resources’ from the Service Dominant Logic of Marketing and ‘cultural lens’ from Consumer Culture Theory, this dissertation considers both individual and collective interaction in order to demonstrate the roles of individual consumers in the value creation process and how the value creation process works. A comprehensive and up to date review of literature provides a guide to the theory and a path for research. This dissertation employed netnography to understand social and cultural aspects of consumption from an online football fan community. The data collection also included participant and non-participant observations, and local fans interviewings. Hermeneutical framework of interpretation was used to analyse data. The findings show that consumers can co-create value among themselves through the roles of ‘provider’ and ‘beneficiary’. It shows the dynamic movement of individual consumers within the continuous learning process of value creation. This dissertation demonstrates that brand community plays a role as a platform of value creation. Consumers can co-create value among themselves through the process of engaging, educating and enriching. The finding demonstrates active roles of consumers in value creation process. This dissertation also discusses how inequalities between resources of consumers in brand community can cause conflicts among them and how these conflicts stimulate consumers to co-create the collective resources. Within this process, consumers have collectively balanced the power through the social interaction in order to eliminate the domination and conflicts. This dissertation extends the previous researches in value creation within brand community by demonstrating how individual consumers engage and negotiated in value creation process. It contributes to respond working consumers and double exploitation through ‘sacrifice’.