Aesthetic Work as Cultural Competence: Chasing Beauty in the Coproduction of Aesthetic Services

Abstract

Prior research stresses the importance of consumer participation in service coproduction. We examine the coproduction of aesthetic services, which are services in which beauty is a critical outcome. Consumers face challenges communicating their aesthetic tastes because of technical constraints that are understood by service providers but that consumers do not fully understand. To fill this gap, consumers do aesthetic work in communities of practice. Service providers also face challenges, as they must coproduce with consumers whose aesthetic tastes are formed amid shifting social standards. In this qualitative study, we highlight aesthetic work as a different type of consumer work that involves developing cultural competence. We identify four types of aesthetic coproduction in which cultural competence is distributed differently within the service dyad: aesthetic codesigning, aesthetic consenting, aesthetic yielding, and aesthetic reigning. We explore the managerial implications that arise as consumers increasingly use online social resources that shape and increase aesthetic expectations. We examine the unintended consequences of aesthetic service coproduction in which providers’ technical and aesthetic expertise is difficult for consumers to understand often leading to disappointing outcomes.

Transforming practices of co-creating values in a contemporary art exhibition

“…Therefore, we have decided to gather data from both stakeholders to allow for comparisons. Secondly, evaluations are contextual to practices, which is opposite to the assumption that aesthetic evaluations are subjective (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017) or more subjective than the more fact-based works (Vlahos et al, 2022). To follow this assumption, we have designed our study to identify stakeholders' evaluations contextual to different principles in different practices, as the framework (Figure 1) suggests.…”

“…Performing practices is based on understanding their rules (Schatzki, 2002; Smagacz-Poziemska et al , 2020) or on a congruent understanding of rules by interactants (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). The assumption that the evaluations are contextual to practices is the opposite of assuming that they are subjective criteria of individual decisions (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017; Vlahos et al , 2022). Such a view contradicts previous studies in the contemporary art domain, which focused on the subjectivity of aesthetic evaluations (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017).…”

“…It suggests that the transformation of practices is the research problem, and practice is the unit of analysis. Therefore, scholars should generate data about stakeholders’ interactions, interpret the data as “moments” of routine and social practices and investigate how value benchmarks change with practices rather than just look at increasing or decreasing outcomes (Vlahos et al , 2022).…”