Impact of customer co creation behaviors on crowd local delivery service quality master’s thesis, vietnam national university, hanoi

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

VU LE HUY

IMPACT OF CUSTOMER COCREATION BEHAVIORS ON
CROWD LOCAL DELIVERY
SERVICE QUALITY

MASTER’S THESIS
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION


Hanoi, 2019


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY

VU LE HUY

IMPACT OF CUSTOMER CO-CREATION
BEHAVIORS ON CROWD LOCAL
DELIVERY SERVICE QUALITY
MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
CODE: 60340102

RESEARCH SUPERVISORS:
ASSOC. PROF. DR. VU ANH DUNG

PROF. DR. YOSHIKI MATSUI

Hanoi, 2019


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, I would like to show my profound gratitude towards Associate
Professor Vu Anh Dung and Professor Yoshi Matsui for your kind and careful
guidance over my master thesis. In class, you are both wonderful teachers of the
course of international business and operation management. To Associate Professor
Vu Anh Dung, thank you very much for your suggestion of value co-creation, it is
an interesting and attractive research topic that I hardly know about it before.
Without your recommendation, I obviously lost the chance to learn about this key
concept of modern marketing. To Professor Matsui, I enjoy my time in your seminar
very much. Thank to your precious suggestion and interesting arguments that help
me to know more about survey-based empirical research that I almost know nothing
about it previously. From bottom of my heart, I really want to apologize to you for
my not very good thesis that deserve your supports.
Secondly, I would like to thank VJU and YNU professors, students and staffs
to help me to have unforgettable two years. Especially my beloved MBA2, you guys
are so interesting and fun. I am happy to have chance to know you all.
Finally, I would like to thank Ms. Huyen (aka Huong or vice versa). You have
done a wonderful job that takes care all of our MBA2 students. I wish you had best
success and happiness with your family and your career.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES...................................................................................................... i
LIST OF FIGURES.................................................................................................iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS................................................................................... iv

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................. 1
1.1. Necessity of the thesis.................................................................................... 1
1.2. Research objectives........................................................................................ 1
1.3. Research questions......................................................................................... 1
1.4. Research scope............................................................................................... 2
1.5. Structure of the research................................................................................. 2
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................... 3
2.1. Overview of value co-creation........................................................................ 3
2.2 Dimensions of customer co-creation behavior................................................. 9
2.3. Crowd logistics and crowd local delivery service........................................ 18
2.4. Logistics service quality............................................................................... 22
2.5. Research gap................................................................................................ 25
CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH MODEL AND METHODOLOGY.............................27
3.1. Dimensions of customer value co-creation behavior in crowd local food
delivery service................................................................................................... 27


3.1.1. Service delivery process of crowd local food delivery..........................27
3.1.2. Analyzing dimensions of customer co-creation behavior......................29
3.2. Conceptual model and hypotheses development.......................................... 30
3.2.1. Responsible behavior and quality of crowd local food delivery service 31

3.2.2. Feedback and quality of crowd local food delivery service...................31
3.2.3. Advocacy and quality of crowd local food delivery service..................32
3.2.4. Tolerance and quality of crowd local food delivery service...................32
3.3. Measure items development......................................................................... 32
3.4. Research method.......................................................................................... 35
CHAPTER 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS............................................... 36
4.1. Data collection and demographic results...................................................... 36
4.2. Reliability test.............................................................................................. 38

4.2.1. Reliability analysis of Responsible behavior......................................... 38
4.2.2. Reliability analysis of Feedback............................................................ 39
4.2.3. Reliability analysis of Tolerance............................................................ 40
4.2.4. Reliability analysis of Advocacy........................................................... 41
4.2.5. Reliability analysis of Quality............................................................... 42
4.3. Factor analysis.............................................................................................. 43
4.4. Correlation test............................................................................................. 45
4.5. Regression.................................................................................................... 46
4.6. Findings and implications............................................................................. 47


CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION................................................................................ 49
5.1. Contributions................................................................................................ 49
5.1.1. Academic contribution........................................................................... 49
5.1.2. Practical contribution............................................................................. 49
5.2. Limitations................................................................................................... 49
5.3. Future research............................................................................................. 50
REFERENCES........................................................................................................ 51
APPENDIXES........................................................................................................ 58
Appendix 1. Survey form in both Vietnamese and English.................................58
Appendix 2. Question items on customer co-creation behavior (Yi & Gong, 2013)
62
Appendix 3. Question items on service quality (Stank et al., 2003)....................63


LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1. Comparison between business logistics and crowd logistics (Carbone et
al., 2017)................................................................................................................. 20
Table 2.2. Characteristics of local delivery service (Carbone et al., 2017).............22
Table 2.3. Dimensions of SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al., 1988)........................24

Table 3.1. Questions of co-creation behavior.......................................................... 33
Table 3.2. Questions of local delivery service quality............................................. 34
Table 4.1. Gender of respondents (Processed by SPSS 24)..................................... 36
Table 4.2. Age distribution of respondents (Processed by SPSS 24)......................37
Table 4.3. Education level of respondents (Processed by SPSS 24).......................37
Table 4.4. Living location of respondents (Processed by SPSS 24)........................37
Table 4.5. Most frequently used service (Processed by SPSS 24)........................... 38
Table 4.6. Testing reliability of Responsible behavior (Processed by SPSS 24).....38
Table 4.7. Testing reliability of Feedback (Processed by SPSS 24)........................39
Table 4.8. Re-testing reliability of Feedback 1 (Processed by SPSS 24)................39
Table 4.9. Re-testing reliability of Feedback 2 (Processed by SPSS 24)................40
Table 4.10. Testing reliability of Tolerance (Processed by SPSS 24)......................40
Table 4.11. Re-testing reliability of Tolerance (Processed by SPSS 24).................41
Table 4.12. Testing reliability of Advocacy (Processed by SPSS 24).....................41
Table 4.13. Re-testing reliability of Advocacy (Processed by SPSS 24).................42

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Table 4.14. Testing reliability of Quality (Processed by SPSS 24).........................42
Table 4.15. Re-testing reliability of Quality (Processed by SPSS 24).....................43
Table 4.16. KMO and Bartlett's test (Processed by SPSS 24).................................43
Table 4.17. EFA rotated component matrix (Processed by SPSS 24)......................44
Table 4.18. Correlations (Processed by SPSS 24)................................................... 46
Table 4.19. Regression model summary (Processed by SPSS 24)..........................46
Table 4.20. Regression coefficients (Processed by SPSS 24).................................47

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Spheres of value co-creation (Grönroos & Voima, 2013).......................8
Figure 2.2. Constituent parts of value co-creation (Saarijärvi et al., 2013)...............9
Figure 2.3. Third-order factor model with CFA results (Yi & Gong, 2013)............11
Figure 2.4. Antecedents and dimensions of value co-creation (Neghina et al., 2015)
13
Figure 2.5. Dimensions of co-creation activities in three phases of service provision
(Tommasetti et al., 2017)......................................................................................... 16
Figure 2.6. Dismantling value co-creation in crowd logistics (Carbone et al., 2017)
21
Figure 2.7. Conceptual model of e-LSQ (Rao et al., 2011)..................................... 25
Figure 3.1. Crowd local food delivery process....................................................... 28
Figure 3.2. Conceptual model................................................................................. 31

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
SDL
LSQ
e-LSQ
PDS
PDSQ
SERVQUAL
SERVPERF
EFA
RB
FB
TO
AD

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Necessity of the thesis
Value co-creation is a key concept in modern marketing theory (Saarijärvi,
Kannan, & Kuusela, 2013). It has been approached from different perspectives and
levels. However, most of studies focus on the macro or meso level and leave the
micro-level many unanswered questions. Recently, crowd initiatives have risen in
many business industries, especially logistics and believe to provide new means of
logistics value co-creation (Carbone, Rouquet, & Roussat, 2017). The major type of
crowd logistics – crowd local delivery gets more attentions from business
internationally but very few from academic research. It also fosters new need of
measuring new service quality in its model. All of these issues bring up an idea of
investigate relation between customer co-creation behavior within crowd local
delivery service and their perception of value.
Service quality is always a vital concern for service business, especially the
new type as crowd local delivery. Since it relies much more on co-creation among
involved actors in its nature of service model, it is important to understand potential
relationship between service quality of crowd local delivery and customer cocreation behavior. Based on insights from this potential relationship, effective
implications that could improve service quality from customer co-creation could be
suggested for practical businesses.
1.2. Research objectives
This research aims at measure the relationship between level of customer
value co-creation behavior and service quality of crowd local delivery.
1.3. Research questions
“Which dimensions of customer co-creation behavior have impact on factors
of crowd local delivery service?”
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1.4. Research scope
Because of limitations in terms of survey scale, only type of food delivery is
researched.
1.5. Structure of the research
This thesis consists of 5 chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction – revealing basic ideas of the research in
terms of background, objectives, subject and scope of the research
Chapter 2: Literature review – building comprehensive understanding
over very complicated concept of value co-creation as well as background
to promote refined logistics service quality measurement for the new
crowd business initiatives in logistics industry.

Chapter 3: Research model and methodology – describing the
conceptual model and how the research is designed and carried out.
Chapter 4: Data analysis and findings – discussion of research results
Chapter 5: Conclusion – summarizing the contributions, limitations
and intentions for future research

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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Overview of value co-creation
Research stream of value co-creation rooted in the observation of changing roles
between customers and firms. Customers have been long considered as passive actor in
value creation. Traditionally, under the assumptions and models of industrial economy
(R. F. Lusch & Vargo, 2014a, 2014b); Porter (2008); (Stephen L Vargo & Lusch, 2008;
Stephen L. Vargo & Lusch, 2011) value is only created for customers and its creation is

driven by value-adding activities (Normann & Ramirez, 1993). Both of technological
advances and changes of management towards unconventional and innovative ways of
integrating resources for the creation of value lead to new forms and shapes of
interaction that replace this traditional dyadic relationships. Value creation should not
be limited in the manufacturing process, but extends over consumption contexts under
customers’ own control (Grönroos, 2008a; R. F. Lusch

& Vargo, 2014b). The focus is shifting from value creation to co-creation in order to
realize the new role of customers. It is crucial for firms to comprehend the logic of
business ecosystems facilitating value co-creation, in order to gain and maintain
competitiveness. As a result, value co-creation is one the most important concept
within service marketing and business management (Saarijärvi et al., 2013).
Currently, there are multiple ways to approach value co-creation. Each
approaches target value co-creation from different perspectives, scopes and level of
abstraction, thus they provides a complex of definitions, dimensions and
interactions among actors (Galvagno & Dalli, 2014). It is both of practical examples
such as Dell, Lego… and academic arguments that contribute to the fragmentations
and diversification (Di Gangi & Wasko, 2009; Hienerth, Keinz, & Lettl, 2011). The
major approaches to value co-creation are discussed in the following parts.
Many-to-many marketing

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Instead of dyadic relation between firms and customers, this approach promotes
the role of customer networks and the importance of other factors from broader view,
such as employees, marketing intermediaries, and society during the co-creation
process of value (Gummesson, 2007). Edvardsson, Tronvoll, and Gruber (2011) have
presented a social constructionist approach that only considers value co-creation in the
social context and uses the holistic concept of value as “value-in-social-context”.

New product and service development
Customers tend to be more active and willing to involve in the firms’ new
product/service development process. The involvement of customers in the
development process helps firms to discover the hidden needs of customers as well
as take advantage of their creative potentials. Nambisan and Nambisan (2008) have
suggested that customer could have multiple roles in the development process,
consist of product conceptualizer, designer, tester, support specialist and marketer.
This involvement of customer rises partly upon the facilitation of technological
advances, especially the Internet (S. Ohern & Rindfleisch, 2010).
Postmodern marketing
Similar to new product and service development literature, the postmodern
marketing also acknowledges the more active customers “who takes elements of market
offerings and crafts a customized consumption experience out of these” (Fuat Firat,
Dholakia, & Venkatesh, 1995). Customers require a more active role in production and
in order to meet this demand and enable active participation of customers, marketers
have to make their business processes more open (Bendapudi & Leone, 2003; Firat &
Venkatesh, 1995). This phenomenon is often referred as “prosumption” that involves
both production and consumption (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). According to Bendapudi
and Leone (2003), customers have attained a new role that traditionally attaches to the
producers. Thus, customers’ consumption is gradually viewed as a production process
and requires “development of special skills” (Fuat Firat et al., 1995). This view shares
similarities with later approaches that

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customer’s value creation also embraces not just the good or the service but
additional resources (e.g. information and knowledge) (Grönroos, 2008b; R. F.
Lusch & Vargo, 2014a). According to Fuat Firat et al. (1995), the product does not

consider as a “finished” object but a process that “customer could immerse oneself
and contribute inputs”.
The Service-Dominant logic
In the past decade, the stream of research on SDL has caught a lot of attentions of
researchers for both the academic purposes and practical implications (Tommasetti,
Troisi, & Vesci, 2017). Research on SDL (R. F. Lusch & Vargo, 2014a, 2014b; Stephen
L Vargo & Lusch, 2008; Stephen L. Vargo & Lusch, 2011) has intensified discussion
about value co-creation because value co-creation is a key concept in SDL (Stephen L
Vargo & Lusch, 2008). Despite that SDL is dominant theory in marketing and value cocreation, it is still a pre-theoretical paradigm (Cantone, Testa, & Marrone, 2019).
Stephen L. Vargo and Lusch (2016) recognized the limitation of the current foundational
premises/axioms of SDL that lacks explicit articulated specification of the co-creation
mechanism. Therefore, SDL to date could be regarded as a logic or mindset that
includes many fragmentations of marketing (Gummesson, 2008). According to SDL, the
logic of goods-centric thinking that marketing has inherited is less germane in the
current service era. This way of thinking has influenced how value and value creation
are perceived. In the new era with increasing relevance of service, service rather than
goods, should be the fundamental unit of exchange, and goods only function as
transmitters of services and means for customers to get benefits from firm competences
(R. F. Lusch & Vargo, 2014a; Stephen L Vargo & Lusch, 2008). Actualization of value
of goods only happens if customers continue the value creation process. “For these
services to be delivered, the consumer still must learn to use, maintain, repair, and adapt
the appliance to his or her unique needs, usage situations and behaviors” (R. F. Lusch &
Vargo, 2014a). Consumers are considers as source of operant resources that play
essential role within resources integration during value creation. Because operant
resources are different

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and heterogeneous in each individuals, the capability of consumer skills and

knowledge influences how value is created (Saarijärvi et al., 2013). Thus value is a
joint function of actions of consumers and producers (Ramaswamy & Prahalad,
2004), and is certainly always co-created (Stephen L Vargo & Lusch, 2008).
According to Stephen L Vargo and Lusch (2008), value co-creation consists of
two components. The first is the co-creation of value. In SDL, at the intersection of
the offer and the consumer, value is created and determined by the consumer in the
consumption process. The second component of value co-creation is co-production
that refers to the involvement in the creation of the core offering itself. Coproduction can occur via shared ideas, co-design, or even shared production, with
any partners in the value network.
Service science
Service science largely overlaps with SDL and originates from an IBM-led
discipline (Saarijärvi et al., 2013). Maglio and Spohrer (2008) have suggested that
service science theoretically roots in SDL. Its approach considers that value co-creation
occurs via the integration of existing resources and the available ones from various
service systems, rather than just firm competences and consumers’ operant resources in
SDL. The purpose of the mentioned resource integration in service science is to
“contribute to system well-being as determined by the systems’ environment context”
(R. F. Lusch, Vargo, & Wessels, 2008). According to service science, a service system
is value co-creation layouts that consist of people, technology and value propositions
(Saarijärvi et al., 2013). In each service system, both a service provider and a customer
interact each other to co-create value, and every service systems depends on other
entities (Jim, Laura, Norm, & Tryg, 2008). Therefore, service science approaches to
value co-creation in a broader perspective in comparison with SDL. The resources
integration and configuration within a service system and between different service
systems is certainly very large and technology often plays an important role as a critical
facilitator (Saarijärvi et al., 2013).

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Service logic
Deviating from SDL, researchers in service logic approach introduce clear
separation of customer service logic and provider service logic (Grönroos & Ravald,
2011). Regarding to the former service logic, customers combine the resources that
are provided by the firm with other resources they could access in daily activities
and in the value creation processes. In this approach, value is eventually created by
the customers and they also carry out the value creation processes. Hence, value is
not always co-created and basically it could be the result of customer’s own act
(Grönroos, 2008b; Heinonen et al., 2010). Only in case that the firm wants to
become the co-creator of value with customer, it has to apply provider service logic
and creates the interactions with the customer. These interactions help firm be able
to influence the value actualization process of the customer and could assure that the
actualized value-in-use equates to the value proposition (Grönroos, 2008b). The firm
needs to develop effective way to interact with the customer, in order to become a
value co-creator with its customers. Grönroos and Voima (2013) have introduced a
concept of value spheres that further distinguish domains of provider, customer and
the joint area. The value of provider sphere is just potential. Through the
actualization process, the value of customer sphere is the real value and it is
independent in case of customer’s sole creation process. Value is only co-creation in
the joint sphere as the result of interactions between provider and customer.

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Provider
sphere
Production
(potential value)

Figure 2.1. Spheres of value co-creation

(Grönroos & Voima, 2013)
All the above approaches from many-to-many marketing, new product
development, postmodern marketing, SDL, service science and service logic to
value co-creation proves the nuanced multifaceted nature of the concept (Saarijärvi
et al., 2013). A variety of value co-creation approaches enriches knowledge about
the concept and clearly expresses its importance and attractiveness in academic
research as well as potential practical implications. However, it is challenging to
capture the concept of value co-creation with the given various approaches.
Aligning with Grönroos and Ravald (2011) that emphasized the key importance of
actors’ role classification, Saarijärvi et al. (2013) suggest a useful model to explore
different approaches to value co-creation. The model dismantles value co-creation
into three fundamental parts that consist of “value”, “co-” and “creation”.

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Figure 2.2. Constituent parts of value co-creation
(Saarijärvi et al., 2013)
2.2 Dimensions of customer co-creation behavior
As the above discussion on different research approaches to value co-creation
that varies in terms of perspectives, level of abstraction and scope. The concept of
value co-creation is studied from the either micro, meso or macro level of interaction
level. Among these different levels, to date, most of studies are on meso (R. F.
Lusch, 2011) or macro (R. Lusch & E. Webster, 2011; Maglio & Spohrer, 2008;
Wieland, Polese, Vargo, & Lusch, 2014) perspectives. Thus, there are few answers
about how interactions happen between customer and firm employee at the micro
level (Neghina, Caniëls, Bloemer, & van Birgelen, 2015). Understanding this basic
level of interactions is essential for better knowing the concept of value co-creation
in larger contexts. According to R. F. Lusch (2006) development of a detailed macromarketing perspective is based on insights of micro-level. Further discussions in this
part are the most relevant studies of value co-creation at the basic level of direct

interactions between customer and employee.
Randall, Gravier, and Prybutok (2011) introduce a model of three variables to
measure scale and analyze not directly value co-creation but only the relational
feature of the concept. Based on the adoption of mixed method and quantitative

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analysis, the authors suggest connection, trust and commitment as dimensions of
value co-creation with question mark. The study doubtfully departs from SDL and
featuring customer relationship management approach (Tommasetti et al., 2017).
Gustafsson, Kristensson, and Witell (2012) focus on the role of
communication in fostering co-creation and innovation. The study identifies four
categories of communication, including frequency, direction, modality and content.
Communication however, is just a section in the interactions between firm and
customer. Therefore, main limitation of the study is its specific narrow scope of cocreation. Moreover, the study approach is somewhat on the single corporate point of
view.
Third-order factor model of customer co-creation behavior
Yi and Gong (2013) introduce a third-order model that consists two major
dimensions: customer participation behaviors and customer citizenship behaviors. It
is popular among the empirical studies on customer co-creation (Ahn, Lee, Back, &
Schmitt, 2019; Hau, Tram Anh, & Thuy, 2017; Hussainy, 2017) in various service
industries. While authors define customer participation behavior as a role behavior
that is required for value co-creation process, customer citizenship behavior is
voluntary and additional. The citizenship behavior could help to bring extraordinary
value to the firm but it does not consider as requirements for value co-creation like
the participation behavior. In short, customer participation behavior is in-role and
customer citizenship behavior is extra-role behavior. Separate scales are adopted to
measure each type of behavior based on the empirical evidence that in-role and
extra-role behaviors have different patterns and antecedents as well as consequences

(M. Groth, 2005; Yi, Nataraajan, & Gong, 2011). In this model, each construct
consists of four different lower-order dimensions.

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Figure 2.3. Third-order factor model with CFA results
(Yi & Gong, 2013)
Dimensions of customer participation behavior
Information seeking: customers put effort into clarifying the requirements
of service and satisfaction of other cognitive needs. Provision of this these
information helps to reduce the customers’ uncertainty about service
interaction and value co-creation with employees. Hence, customers could
understand and manage the co-creation environment as well as their role of
value co-creator.
Information sharing: from the side of customers, some resources are very
important to achieve successful value co-creation with firm, such as
information. Without essential information, firm’s employees could not
perform their duties as they are capable of. By sharing this information with
employees, customers themselves could make sure that the delivered
service meets their specific needs.
Responsible behavior: Customers also have certain duties and
responsibilities to comply with in order to have successful service delivery.
Customers recognize their responsibilities to be cooperative, follow the
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service rules, policies, and directions from employees. In case of lack of
cooperative behavior from customers, little value could be created.
Personal interaction: this dimension represents interpersonal relations

between customers and employees. Different aspects of these type of
human interactions could be take into account such as courtesy, friendliness,
respect… In the social setting of value co-creation environment, people
tend to be more likely to engage in co-creation if they feel more pleasant,
congenial and positive.
Dimensions of customer citizenship behavior
Feedback: It is essential for firm and employees to improve the service
creation process in the long-term. Firm could be greatly beneficial as
receiving suggestions from customers for better service. Even though,
feedback is not requisite for successful service result.
Advocacy: the behavior of customers that recommend firm or employees to
other people. Obviously, advocacy is effective word-of-mouth
advertisement and could contribute significantly to establish firm’s positive
fame. Although this kind of behavior could represent the evidence of
loyalty, it is voluntary and not required to perform the service delivery.
Helping: Customers could help each other to realize their value creation
environment and roles of value co-creator. It could be considered as a sense
of social responsibility among customers to help each other under similar
difficulties.
Tolerance: to some extent, customers could tolerate a certain failure of
service to meet their expectation. Mistakes and risks could always happen
and be inevitable. This kind of empathy toward firm could come from the
belief of long-term fruitfulness from customers’ perspective.
Model of joint activities

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Based on the previous studies (Gustafsson et al., 2012; Karpen, Bove, &
Lukas, 2012; Randall et al., 2011; Yi & Gong, 2013), Neghina et al. (2015)

introduce a model of customer value co-creation behaviors with six dimensions of
joint activities and three antecedents. This study is in line with the approach of
service logic rather than SDL (Tommasetti et al., 2017).

Figure 2.4. Antecedents and dimensions of value co-creation
(Neghina et al., 2015)
From the Grönroos (2012)’s conceptualization of value co-creation, two key
aspects of value co-creation are: the purpose is to create value with service as the
basic unit of exchange; co-creation is a joint collaborative activity. According to the
behavioral sciences, a joint activity is defined as a social interaction that two
individuals use to coordinate their actions in order to make a change in the
environment (Knoblich, Butterfill, & Sebanz, 2011). In services, the joint activities
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between customer and employee as they interact each other may include several
discrete joint actions. Based on the single purpose of each joint actions, it is possible to
distinguish these actions. Each joint actions lead to different value creation.

Based on the work of Karpen et al. (2012), Neghina et al. (2015) form six
dimensions of value co-creation from six types of joint actions:
Individualizing joint actions: are collaborative actions between customers
and employees for mutual understandings of each other’s roles, resources,
integration process and desired outcomes. From customers’ perspective,
these actions could consist of personal preferences explanation, description
of the personal hierarchy of needs or informing the preferred means of
interactions…
Relating joint actions: are part of the value co-creating activity that provide
necessary condition for occurrence of interactions, since any interaction
always involves a relational element. In a service interaction, this

dimension could be referred as actions that aimed at building or enhancing
a social and emotional relationship between customers and employees.
Such actions as exploring similarities between interaction participants,
sharing mutual interests… are examples of this dimension.
Empowering joint actions: refer as collaborative actions that negotiate the
power to influence the outcome of the interaction between customers and
employees. Because of empowered role, actors in value co-creating processes
could resume their responsibility for the outcome and could take action to
intervene in case that they believe that it is necessary for the overall goal.

Ethical joint actions: are collaborative actions that aims at creating fair and
moral guidelines among participants of interactions. In order to achieve
successful interactions, the involved actors have to work toward a shared
goal without conflicts. Ethical behavior is very important to minimize risks
of occurring conflicts, thus becomes a critical factor for value co-creation.

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