Anne Veith, Albert Assaf, and Alexander Josiassen quality. The research showed, however, that although a certain degree of control was desired by consumers, they primarily preferred to keep the organizations on board as quality markers. Giving consumers full control was generally only well-seen when the end products would be exclusive to that one user, i.e. not be sold on the market. The online publishing service interviewed, saw customers as censors on the assumption that each customer will follow other customers who rate the books. This, however, makes deciding on a book an even higher involvement activity than it currently is, but the reader will not necessarily have a higher valued experience with the book than he currently has, opposing the notion of high involvement requiring a high perceived value of the reward, lowering consumers’ willingness to participate. Facilitator 8 – Stay in control – most of the control: Organizations and consumers alike are interested in a market with decent standards, however consumers still need to be handed the necessary amount of control in order to personalize their unique experience.
3.7 Relations The relationship between the value creation partners is crucial and therefore the communication and dialogue is. Part of the value is generated through the interactions and when connecting further with the brand, the interactions with the employees and the technological platforms (on which the customers are personalizing, co-producing, etc.) are the main influencers. However, once the co-creating action has begun, the interactions with other users should be considered as well. The findings indicate that although consumers valued interactions highly, they were not very concerned with the B2C interactions, but rather valued the C2C interactions and sometimes the interaction with other users would be the reason to participate. The brand only played a minor role. The example used in the focus group, was based on face-to-face interaction. C2C interactions most often take place in online communities, however, other than a ‘reason to stick around’, as one respondent put it, (Danish) consumers may not be as impressed by communities, i.e. online communities are nice, but they are not vital. They can however help the educational efforts by the company, because parts of the teaching can be relocated to co-members, giving the company more resources to spend on e.g. further development of the offering, etc. Facilitator 9 – C2C interactions should be utilized: Co-created value is generated during interactions, however C2C interactions have an even more positive effect than B2C interactions. In figure 3 the facilitators are illustrated in circles. Circle 1 illustrated what facilitators will ease actual implementation and setup. Circle 2 illustrates which facilitators will attract consumer and organizations and ease the process. Circle 3 illustrates how the value creation process can be maintained. Circle 4 is the final outcome.
Figure 3: The 9 Facilitators
4. Conclusion Through an exploratory qualitative study, 9 facilitators for B2C value co-creation were uncovered. The study was set in the creative industries. The 9 facilitators represent a combination of the main facilitators found in the literature, and they were further reinforced by our qualitative work. The facilitators are individuated offering; accessibility; engage and enable; incentives segmentation; change acceptance, sharing, and learning; manageable implementation for organizations; project-based organization; C2C interactions; keep control. The
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