How is the Customer Contributor and Interpreter of Value? Opening the Black Box of the linkages between value creation and experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to open up the black box of the link between value experience
and value creation through a phenomenological lens. We aim to explore distinct linkages between these two concepts and attempt to investigate what constitutes these linkages and how they relate to value
outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – We conducted an ethnographic study to investigate the “lived experience” of 25 Dutch amateur football teams in the Netherlands, playing on artificial grass pitches.
During a three month time period, we held interviews with junior and senior football players and observed them during their trainings and matches in order to understand the various ways of value experience and value creation when playing on different artificial grass pitches, that is, in their own user
“sphere”.

Findings – We found that the experience of the value of products and services is influenced by the experience of the value creation process and the other way around. Furthermore, we observed why the occurrence of breakdowns in ongoing value creation processes is important because they mediate value
experience from unreflective to reflective. Although presented as a sliding scale, we identified three distinct links between value experience and value creation. At the extreme, we found that reflective experience oriented players to the features of artificial grass that block value creation whilst unreflective
experience of artificial grass leads to an orientation on value creation and outcomes.

Research implications – By presenting these three distinct links, we contribute to the value discussion by posing a nuanced and contingency based view on value experience and value creation. This view challenges our current way of thinking about value experience and creation which so far has been largely
considered as a temporal, fluid and processual phenomenon in which value creation is considered as
implicit.

Originality – What it means to consider customers as both contributor and interpreter of value is an emerging topic in Service-Dominant Logic research. This paper is a novel contribution to this endeavour
by examining the matter from a phenomenological view, taking micro processes of value experience and creation seriously and yet still interested to identify patterns in objective to serve as further theory development and improve marketing practices.