Characterizing Ex situ Value: A Customer-Dominant Perspective on Value

Abstract

Customer value, an important requirement for the success of tourism, is commonly seen as a phenomenon co-created between the tourist and the tourism provider. Positioned in the customer-dominant logic, this paper focuses on the tourist’s perspective and introduces the notion of ex situ value formed outside of the tourist-provider’s interaction and the on-site experiences. The forthcoming qualitative study, which is conducted in the context of an online travel community, explores customers’ travel-related experiences within their own lifeworld. The main contribution is the notion of ex situ value, which involves individual and collective experiences and develops a nuanced view of value emerging in customers’ experiential lifeworld. Thus, the article invites researchers to expand the boundaries of value into the customer lifeworld domain and encourages tourism providers to consider the tourists’ contexts outside the standard measurements of value (tourist and provider interactions as well as on-site experiences) as sources of customer value.

GraphEx: visualizing and managing customer experience in its multidimensionality

“…In practice, managers can visualize experiences in three comprehensive dimensions throughout customer journeys through the adoption of the GraphEx hip-pocket model. This feeds marketing and service managers with novel insights into their task of understanding what and how customers experience, both in interactions with offerings and outside, in the customer domain in which ex situ value can emerge (Heinonen et al ., 2019; Heinonen, 2023). It is essential to include the role of emerging technologies in service innovation(s), enabling seamless customer experiences (Teixeira et al ., 2016).…”

“…the customer) (Carù and Cova, 2003; Helkkula, 2011) as the perception of the remembering self (Kahneman, 2011). “ E x situ ” value can emerge off-site in the subject's lifeworld through individual sense making and collective social interactions (Heinonen, 2023). Experience manifests not only as lived in the “now” but as imaginary in the past and future (Helkkula et al ., 2012; Verhoef et al ., 2009).…”

“…The GraphEx hip-pocket model, supported by charts and illustrations, expresses customer experience over time in three dimensions (valence, type of experience and visceral intensity). We contribute to service theory (Heinonen, 2023;Helkkula et al, 2012;Silva et al, 2021) by disclosing the multidimensional premises of customer experience and adding granularity to this complex yet topical phenomenon. In addition, we open avenues for further research into formalizing the nature of the customer experience and advancing epistemological and methodological approaches to comprehend it.…”

“…In addition, the premise that customer experience results from interventions on behalf of service providers is still prevalent (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020), implying that service providers are the “orchestrators” of customer experience (Pine and Gilmore, 1999, 2011). We consider this control bias problematic, as it downplays the role of the human agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998) of customers, which purports that experience emerges in the customers' lifeworld and revolves around their interpretations, informed by their past, individual, collective and situational filters (Sandström et al ., 2008; Heinonen, 2023). Given the customer agency in shaping their own experience, customer experience cannot always be formed as the service provider intends (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016; Heinonen et al ., 2019).…”

Liminal digital birthspaces: social media and consumer proactivity for well-being

“…Furthermore, the concept of value co-creation with its origins in service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2016) positions value creation as a joint process wherein resource integration facilitates an increase in well-being (Grönroos and Voima, 2013). These resources and capabilities can be drawn from self-generated (consumer-led) activities and behaviors (Heinonen, 2022; McColl-Kennedy et al , 2012) or service-generated (service provider-led) value co-creation activities (Davey et al , 2020). For example, service-generated activities and service design can provide resources that consumers use in resource integration by making consumers feel they have control over the processes through information sharing (Sweeney et al , 2015) and supported through building relationships (Russell-Bennett et al , 2017).…”