Research on value creation traditionally has focused on value created by the company, though customers increasingly serve as active partners, able to create value with firms in a collaborative manner. Despite interest by both scholars and managers, existing research has not yet clarified the interdependencies of service offerings and customer role patterns. This article explores value creation rooted in three generic offerings (configuration, solution, and network) and identifies differences in their prerequisites, customer activities, challenges, abilities, ability enhancers, and perceived benefits that arise in collaborative value creation (CVC). Data from 105 collaborations, collected through in-depth interviews, support the qualitative and quantitative analyses that reveal distinct patterns in customers' value creation for each service offering. A categorical principal components analysis, combined with cluster analysis, identifies five customer roles: bargain-hunting independent, comprehensive help seeker, engaged problem solver, technology-savvy networker, and self-reliant customizer. Our theoretical contribution includes the identification of customer roles across generic offerings and empirical evidence that customers perform multiple roles when engaging in CVC processes. Our findings provide managers engaged in CVC with recommendations on criteria for segmenting customer groups, on the role of the service provider in various value creation processes, and on tailored communication strategies to attract customers.

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Gamification has attracted considerable practitioner attention and has become a viable tactic for influencing behavior, boosting innovation, and improving marketing outcomes across industries. Simultaneously, studies on the use of gamification techniques have emerged in diverse fields, including computer science, education, and healthcare. Despite the broad popularity of gamification in other fields, it has received only limited attention in the service literature. Moreover, the findings of extant studies on gamification in the service field are inconclusive and suggest an incomplete understanding of the employment of gamification in service contexts. Thus, this study aims to integrate the growing but scattered cross-disciplinary literature on gamification and to emphasize its relevance to service research. Specifically, we first conceptualize gamification for service and differentiate it from related concepts. Then, using a systematic literature review, we identify 34 empirical articles that reflect this gamification conceptualization and can be connected to relevant service research themes (e.g., customer participation, experience, and loyalty). Employing activity theory, we derive four higher-order functions of gamification: production, consumption, exchange, and distribution. Finally, we develop a research agenda to generate a better understanding of the central aspects within each of the identified gamification functions and stimulate future academic efforts on gamification in services.

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PurposeDigital platform users not only consume but also produce communication related to their experiences. Although service research has explored users' motivations to communicate and focused on outcomes such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), it remains largely unexplored how users iteratively interact with communication artifacts and potentially create value for themselves, other users and service providers. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to introduce communicative affordances as a framework to advance user-created communication (UCC) in service.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from the literature in communication, service research and interactive marketing, an affordance perspective on UCC in service is introduced.FindingsThree UCC affordances for the service context are presented – interactivity, visibility and anonymity – opportunities and challenges for service providers associated with these affordances are discussed and, finally, affordance-specific research questions and general recommendations for future research are offered.Research limitations/implicationsBy conceptualizing UCC in service from an affordances perspective, this paper moves beyond the traditional sender–receiver communication framework and emphasizes opportunities and challenges for service research and practice.Practical implicationsInstead of focusing separately on specific technologies or user behaviors, it is recommended that service managers adopt a holistic perspective of user goals and motivations, use experiences and platform design.Originality/valueBy conceptualizing UCC as an augmenting, dialogical process concerning users’ experiences, and by introducing communicative affordances as a framework to advance UCC in service, an in-depth understanding of the diverse and ever-evolving landscape of communication in service is offered.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online reviews are important sources of information that help consumers decide which products and services to buy. Although C2C reviews in video format (e.g., on YouTube) have become increasingly popular, research remains focused primarily on textual reviews. This article emphasizes the importance of C2C video reviews in influencing consumer outcomes through parasocial interaction, a special—albeit one-sided—connection with reviewers. Interactivity and self-disclosure are suggested as online communication techniques reviewers can use to foster parasocial interaction with their viewers in a single encounter. Parasocial interaction is further established as a psychological mechanism that underlines the impacts of interactivity and self-disclosure on source credibility, leading to improved consumer purchase intentions. The authors also propose that strong parasocial interaction with reviewers exerts a particularly powerful influence on the purchase decisions of consumers who experience low levels of decision confidence, while arguing for the importance of C2C video reviews in guiding the decisions of various consumer groups. Research recommendations reveal how managers can encourage consumers to create and share video reviews on different platforms and offer guidance on the ways companies can foster parasocial interaction through firm-related marketing communications.

PurposeDigital advertising enables retailers to rely on large volumes of data on consumers and even leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to target consumers online with personalised and context-aware advertisements. One recent example of such advertisements is programmatic advertising (PA), which is facilitated by automatic bidding systems. Given that retailers are expected to increase their use of PA in the future, further insights on the pros and cons of PA are required. This paper aims to enhance the understanding of the implications of PA use for retailers.Design/methodology/approachA theoretical overview is conducted that compares PA to traditional advertising, with an empirical investigation into consumer attitudes towards PA (an online survey of 189 consumers using an experimental design) and a research agenda.FindingsConsumer attitudes towards PA are positively related to attitudes towards the retailer. Further, perceived ad relevance is positively related to attitudes towards PA, which is moderated by (1) consumer perceptions of risks related to sharing their data with retailers online and (2) consumer perceptions of AI's positive potential. Surprisingly, the disclosed use of AI for PA does not significantly influence consumer attitudes towards PA.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature on technology-enabled services by empirically demonstrating that ad relevance drives consumer attitudes towards PA. This paper further examines two contingencies: risk beliefs related to data (i.e. the source of PA) and perceptions of AI (i.e. the somewhat nebulous technology associated with PA) as beneficial. A research agenda illuminates central topics to guide future research on PA in retailing.

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