Cognitive mapping the topic of value co-creation

Cognitive mapping the topic of value co-creation

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of value co-creation in the subject of Business Management is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the value co-creation topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of value co-creation. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on value co-creation, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and value co-creation.

Key words: Value co-creation, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in Business Management, value co-creation is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  value co-creation. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Value co-creation. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on value co-creation.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on the value co-creation topic

From the reading of some academic articles on Value co-creation, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from the value co-creation literature and referencing

Main points from the value co-creation literature	Referencing
Point 1: "Value co-creation can be considered both an old and a new emerging paradigm that focuses on how firms engage their customers in the joint design of new products, services, and innovation. On the one hand, value co-creation is arguably a normative repackaging of the older idea of co-production in services ...., which in turn builds on the decades-old empirical insight into the inseparability of production and consumption in service industries ...... On the other hand, however, new IT technologies have given a renewed impetus to producer–customer interaction, with even individual consumers now being able and invited to participate in the design of new services".	Lehrer, M., A. Ordanini, R. DeFillippi and M. Miozzo. 2012."Challenging the orthodoxy of value co-creation theory: A contingent view of co-production in design-intensive business services" European Management Journal 30, Elsevier: 499-509.
Point 2: "....according to which [service-dominant logic] ‘‘value is always co-created, jointly and reciprocally, in interactions among providers and beneficiaries through the integration of resources and application of competences’’...".	Lehrer, M., A. Ordanini, R. DeFillippi and M. Miozzo. 2012."Challenging the orthodoxy of value co-creation theory: A contingent view of co-production in design-intensive business services" European Management Journal 30, Elsevier: 499-509.
Point 3: "The concept of producing value with clients, even when interviewees were prompted in a casual way to do so by interviewers, did not resonate in any clear consistent way. Indeed, on several occasions ...., interviewees essentially denied the relevance of the concept".	Lehrer, M., A. Ordanini, R. DeFillippi and M. Miozzo. 2012."Challenging the orthodoxy of value co-creation theory: A contingent view of co-production in design-intensive business services" European Management Journal 30, Elsevier: 499-509.
Point 4: "Co-creation, which is developing as a new paradigm in the management literature, allows companies and customers to create value through interaction. Since the early 2000s, co-creation has spread swiftly through theoretical essays and empirical analyses, challenging some of the most important pillars of capitalist economies. In these economies, value is usually determined before a market exchange takes place".	Galvagno, M. and D. Dalli. 2014. "Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review" Managing Service Quality 24(6), Emerald: 643-683.
Point 5: "Co-creation is the joint, collaborative, concurrent, peer-like process of producing new value, both materially and symbolically. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the differences between co-creation and co-production and the need to distinguish between them".	Galvagno, M. and D. Dalli. 2014. "Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review" Managing Service Quality 24(6), Emerald: 643-683.
Point 6: "Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2003, 2004a, b) problematized and articulated the various directions in which co-creation could and should provide benefits for companies and customers, such as improving consumption and usage experiences (Gentile et al., 2007; Payne et al., 2008) and stimulating product and service innovation".	Galvagno, M. and D. Dalli. 2014. "Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review" Managing Service Quality 24(6), Emerald: 643-683.
Point 7: "The co-creation of value is contingent on buyer–seller interaction as the ‘locus of value creation’ (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004, p. 10), and has been suggested to be the raison d’être of interaction and business relationships (Vargo, 2009). However, value co-creation has not yet been rigorously analysed (Grönroos & Voima, 2013) and the processes involved in its implementation remain unclear".	Baumann, J. and K.L. Meunier-FitzHugh. 2015. "Making value co-creation a reality - exploring the co-creative value processes in customer-salesperson interaction" Journal of Marketing Management 31(3-4): 289-316.
Point 8: "Ballantyne and Varey (2006) have suggested relationship development, communicative interaction, and knowledge renewal, as three enablers for the co-creation of value-in-use (also called value co-creation), but these activities remain abstract in their conceptualisation and require refinement and exploration in practice. Co-creation of value-in-use has so far mainly been examined in interorganisational or interdepartmental contexts (e.g. Haas, Snehota, & Corsaro, 2012; Kowalkowski, Persson Ridell, Röndell, & Sörhammar, 2012), which do not consider the importance of personal interaction in the co-creative process".	Baumann, J. and K.L. Meunier-FitzHugh. 2015. "Making value co-creation a reality - exploring the co-creative value processes in customer-salesperson interaction" Journal of Marketing Management 31(3-4): 289-316.
Point 9: "The term ‘value’ has a number of connotations (e.g. ‘added value’ or ‘high-value customer’). For this study, we have therefore adopted Holbrook’s (2006, p. 212) definition of value as an ‘interactive relativistic preference experience’, as it goes beyond a cognitive state of fixed value assessments, and instead comprises multiple dynamic phenomena revolving around customers’ activities and their interaction with service and product offerings".	Baumann, J. and K.L. Meunier-FitzHugh. 2015. "Making value co-creation a reality - exploring the co-creative value processes in customer-salesperson interaction" Journal of Marketing Management 31(3-4): 289-316.
Point 10: "Value co-creation has a significant role to play in business strategy for market opportunity development across the markets (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004b). Value co-creation is important for new product development (NPD) and opening new trajectories across the length and breadth of marketing domain".	Bharti, K., R. Agrawal and V. Sharma. 2014. "What drives the customer of world's largest market to participate in value co-creation?" Marketing Intelligence & Planning 32(4), Emerald: 413-435.
Point 11: "Customer participation can be understood as “the degree to which the customer is involved in producing and delivering the service” (Dabholkar, 1990) or as “an extent to which customers share information, provide suggestions, and engage in shared decision-making reflects customer effort in co-producing a service”....".	Bharti, K., R. Agrawal and V. Sharma. 2014. "What drives the customer of world's largest market to participate in value co-creation?" Marketing Intelligence & Planning 32(4), Emerald: 413-435.
Point 12: "Customer participation has received merit in the work of service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008a) and service logic (Gro¨nroos, 2008; Gro¨nroos and Ravald, 2011) where interaction is expressed as a core of value co-creation. In addition, interaction leads to customer involvement and relationship building (Baron and Warnaby, 2011). Therefore, we posit that customer-marketer interactions will lead to a mutual value creation. The process where the convergence of customers and firms’ takes place is termed as co-creation".	Bharti, K., R. Agrawal and V. Sharma. 2014. "What drives the customer of world's largest market to participate in value co-creation?" Marketing Intelligence & Planning 32(4), Emerald: 413-435.
Point 13: "Successful luxury goods marketing requires the customer to perceive sufficient value in the luxury good to compensate for the high price charged, particularly in times of recession. Therefore, understanding the types of value sought and the processes of value co-creation is important".	Tynan, C., S. McKechnie and C. Chhuon. 2010. "Co-creating value for luxury brands" Journal of Business Research 63, Elsevier: 1156-1163.
Point 14: "... the academy does not yet understand the processes of value creation and recent studies overlook the creation of the service experience (Schembri, 2006). Peñaloza and Venkatesh (2006) recommend that researchers should study markets as social constructions to examine those multiple perspectives of meaning which create value for the customer".	Tynan, C., S. McKechnie and C. Chhuon. 2010. "Co-creating value for luxury brands" Journal of Business Research 63, Elsevier: 1156-1163.
Point 15: "While value is a central concept in marketing (Payne and Holt, 2001), Woodruff and Flint (2006) call for the development of a better understanding of customer value. The focus of traditional marketing is the firm-centered notion of value in exchange, that is making a value proposition for the passive customer to accept or decline (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Recent studies however, emphasize the co-creation of value by the supplier and the “connected, empowered and active customer” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, p.8), who determines value “uniquely and phenomenologically” (Vargo and Lusch, 2008, p. 7) during consumption".	Tynan, C., S. McKechnie and C. Chhuon. 2010. "Co-creating value for luxury brands" Journal of Business Research 63, Elsevier: 1156-1163.
Point 16: "The changes in technology, competition and customer demand fundamentally alter the way the businesses operate. Companies relying on conventional company- centric practices find themselves troubled by decreased customer satisfaction and declined profits. The traditional isolated value creation strategy is losing its utility in the emerging economy. Companies are shifting their focus from increasing internal efficiency to leverage external resources, especially the customer competence, in order to gain new competitive advantages in the new economy".	Zhang, X. and R. Chen. 2008. "Examining the mechanism of the value co-creation with customers" Int. J. Production Economics 116, Elsevier: 242-250.
Point 17: "Future competition centers on personalized interaction with customers to co-create value (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Praha- lad and Krishnan, 2008). Moreover, the customer–firm interaction no longer limits in traditional service sector or marketing activities. Rather, companies may co-create value with customers alone the customer participative chain (Zhang and Chen, 2006), from the co-development of new products, to production, assembly, distribution, retail, after sales service and usage".	"Examining the mechanism of the value co-creation with customers" Int. J. Production Economics 116, Elsevier: 242-250.
Point 18: "Customer becomes a value co-creator, resulting in a system of value co-creation. There are two distinguishing features of such a new system. First, companies take customers as a partner or co-producer instead of an external element (Firat et al., 1995). The changing role of customer from an external element to a co-producer can be realized by a series of co-creation activities as illustrated in the customer participative chain....  Second, co-creation value with customers becomes a new source of competence for businesses strategies (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). From operations management point of view, these new competitive capabilities include customerization capability and the service capability".	"Examining the mechanism of the value co-creation with customers" Int. J. Production Economics 116, Elsevier: 242-250.
Point 19: "Co-creation refers to the processes by which both consumers and producers collaborate, or otherwise participate, in creating value (e.g. Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Within this perspective, consumers are assumed to create value-in-use and co-create value with organizations, thus realizing their potential to utilize consumption to demonstrate knowledge, distinction, and expertise (e.g. Alba and Hutchinson, 1987); construct, represent, and maintain their identity (e.g. Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010; Fırat et al., 1995); and form social networks".	Pongsakornrungsilp, S. and J.E. Schroder. 2011. "Understanding value co-creation in a co-consuming brand community" Marketing Theory 11(3), Sage: 303-324.
Point 20: "Consumers may co-create value not only by participating in the market or company, but also by outflanking companies or marketers through defiant or oppositional consumption practices, such as consumer empowerment (Denegri-Knott et al., 2006; Kozinets and Handelman, 2004); and consumer resistance (Dalli and Corciolani, 2008; Holt, 2002; Kozinets, 2002a; Pongsakornrungsilp et al., 2008); or cultural hijacking".	Pongsakornrungsilp, S. and J.E. Schroder. 2011. "Understanding value co-creation in a co-consuming brand community" Marketing Theory 11(3), Sage: 303-324.
Point 21: "Due to the dynamism and multidimensionality of value (e.g. Lawrence and Phillips, 2002; Sa´nchez-Ferna´ndez and Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007; Vargo and Lusch, 2008), value co-creation processes often depend on how consumers interpret market offerings, marketing communication, quality, performance, and value".	Pongsakornrungsilp, S. and J.E. Schroder. 2011. "Understanding value co-creation in a co-consuming brand community" Marketing Theory 11(3), Sage: 303-324.
Point 22: "IT-based co-creation of value encompasses the idea that the IT value created is realized through actions of multiple parties and that this value emanates from robust collaborative relationships among firms (Kohli and Grover, 2008). Furthermore, to sustain IT-based co-creation, there must be incentives for parties to participate and equitably share the emergent value (Kohli and Grover, 2008). These conditions that differentiate IT-based co-creation from IT-based value alone explain why IOIS [interorganizational information systems] implemented to support SCC [supply chain collaboration], usually called supply chain collaboration systems (SCCSs), actually foster IT based co-creation of value".	Hadaya, P. and L. Cassivi. 2012. "Joint collaborative planning as a governance mechanism to strengthen the chain of IT value co-creation" Journal of Strategic Information Systems 21, Elsevier: 182-200.
Point 23: "Service-dominant (S-D) logic highlights the value-creation process that occurs when an individual consumes (or uses) a product (or service), as opposed to when the output is manufactured (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008a). The topic of ‘‘value creation’’ is of growing importance in the management and marketing literature. These studies indicate that firms can create competitive advantage by improving value management".	Andreu, L., I Sánchez and C. Mele. 2010. "Value co-creation among retailers and consumers: New insights into the furniture market" Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 17, Elsevier: 241-250.
Point 24: ".... customers do not buy goods or services but instead buy what is perceived to be of value for them. Therefore, it is not helpful to speak about services marketing in opposition to goods marketing. Marketing is concerned with value propositions, and the term ‘‘service’’ has the same meaning as ‘‘value’’...".	Andreu, L., I Sánchez and C. Mele. 2010. "Value co-creation among retailers and consumers: New insights into the furniture market" Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 17, Elsevier: 241-250.
Point 25: "Central to service provision is the concept of ‘‘operant resources’’ – the ability of acting on other resources, such as knowledge and competences – which are sources of competitive advantage..... Customers are operant resources, while firms integrate and transform micro- specialised competences into complex services that are demanded in the marketplace".	Andreu, L., I Sánchez and C. Mele. 2010. "Value co-creation among retailers and consumers: New insights into the furniture market" Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 17, Elsevier: 241-250.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in value co-creation	Point 1: "Value co-creation can be considered both an old and a new emerging paradigm that focuses on how firms engage their customers in the joint design of new products, services, and innovation. On the one hand, value co-creation is arguably a normative repackaging of the older idea of co-production in services ...., which in turn builds on the decades-old empirical insight into the inseparability of production and consumption in service industries ...... On the other hand, however, new IT technologies have given a renewed impetus to producer–customer interaction, with even individual consumers now being able and invited to participate in the design of new services". Point 4: "Co-creation, which is developing as a new paradigm in the management literature, allows companies and customers to create value through interaction. Since the early 2000s, co-creation has spread swiftly through theoretical essays and empirical analyses, challenging some of the most important pillars of capitalist economies. In these economies, value is usually determined before a market exchange takes place". Point 13: "Successful luxury goods marketing requires the customer to perceive sufficient value in the luxury good to compensate for the high price charged, particularly in times of recession. Therefore, understanding the types of value sought and the processes of value co-creation is important". Point 14: "... the academy does not yet understand the processes of value creation and recent studies overlook the creation of the service experience (Schembri, 2006). Peñaloza and Venkatesh (2006) recommend that researchers should study markets as social constructions to examine those multiple perspectives of meaning which create value for the customer". Point 15: "While value is a central concept in marketing (Payne and Holt, 2001), Woodruff and Flint (2006) call for the development of a better understanding of customer value. The focus of traditional marketing is the firm-centered notion of value in exchange, that is making a value proposition for the passive customer to accept or decline (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Recent studies however, emphasize the co-creation of value by the supplier and the “connected, empowered and active customer” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, p.8), who determines value “uniquely and phenomenologically” (Vargo and Lusch, 2008, p. 7) during consumption". Point 16: "The changes in technology, competition and customer demand fundamentally alter the way the businesses operate. Companies relying on conventional company- centric practices find themselves troubled by decreased customer satisfaction and declined profits. The traditional isolated value creation strategy is losing its utility in the emerging economy. Companies are shifting their focus from increasing internal efficiency to leverage external resources, especially the customer competence, in order to gain new competitive advantages in the new economy". Point 23: "Service-dominant (S-D) logic highlights the value-creation process that occurs when an individual consumes (or uses) a product (or service), as opposed to when the output is manufactured (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008a). The topic of ‘‘value creation’’ is of growing importance in the management and marketing literature. These studies indicate that firms can create competitive advantage by improving value management".
Variable 2: Improve intellectual understanding of value co-creation	Point 2: "....according to which [service-dominant logic] ‘‘value is always co-created, jointly and reciprocally, in interactions among providers and beneficiaries through the integration of resources and application of competences’’...". Point 5: "Co-creation is the joint, collaborative, concurrent, peer-like process of producing new value, both materially and symbolically. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the differences between co-creation and co-production and the need to distinguish between them". Point 8: "Ballantyne and Varey (2006) have suggested relationship development, communicative interaction, and knowledge renewal, as three enablers for the co-creation of value-in-use (also called value co-creation), but these activities remain abstract in their conceptualisation and require refinement and exploration in practice. Co-creation of value-in-use has so far mainly been examined in interorganisational or interdepartmental contexts (e.g. Haas, Snehota, & Corsaro, 2012; Kowalkowski, Persson Ridell, Röndell, & Sörhammar, 2012), which do not consider the importance of personal interaction in the co-creative process". Point 9: "The term ‘value’ has a number of connotations (e.g. ‘added value’ or ‘high-value customer’). For this study, we have therefore adopted Holbrook’s (2006, p. 212) definition of value as an ‘interactive relativistic preference experience’, as it goes beyond a cognitive state of fixed value assessments, and instead comprises multiple dynamic phenomena revolving around customers’ activities and their interaction with service and product offerings". Point 11: "Customer participation can be understood as “the degree to which the customer is involved in producing and delivering the service” (Dabholkar, 1990) or as “an extent to which customers share information, provide suggestions, and engage in shared decision-making reflects customer effort in co-producing a service”....". Point 12: "Customer participation has received merit in the work of service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008a) and service logic (Gro¨nroos, 2008; Gro¨nroos and Ravald, 2011) where interaction is expressed as a core of value co-creation. In addition, interaction leads to customer involvement and relationship building (Baron and Warnaby, 2011). Therefore, we posit that customer-marketer interactions will lead to a mutual value creation. The process where the convergence of customers and firms’ takes place is termed as co-creation". Point 19: "Co-creation refers to the processes by which both consumers and producers collaborate, or otherwise participate, in creating value (e.g. Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). Within this perspective, consumers are assumed to create value-in-use and co-create value with organizations, thus realizing their potential to utilize consumption to demonstrate knowledge, distinction, and expertise (e.g. Alba and Hutchinson, 1987); construct, represent, and maintain their identity (e.g. Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010; Fırat et al., 1995); and form social networks". Point 21: "Due to the dynamism and multidimensionality of value (e.g. Lawrence and Phillips, 2002; Sa´nchez-Ferna´ndez and Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007; Vargo and Lusch, 2008), value co-creation processes often depend on how consumers interpret market offerings, marketing communication, quality, performance, and value". Point 24: ".... customers do not buy goods or services but instead buy what is perceived to be of value for them. Therefore, it is not helpful to speak about services marketing in opposition to goods marketing. Marketing is concerned with value propositions, and the term ‘‘service’’ has the same meaning as ‘‘value’’...". Point 25: "Central to service provision is the concept of ‘‘operant resources’’ – the ability of acting on other resources, such as knowledge and competences – which are sources of competitive advantage..... Customers are operant resources, while firms integrate and transform micro- specialised competences into complex services that are demanded in the marketplace".
Variable 3: Effective value co-creation practices	Point 6: "Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2003, 2004a, b) problematized and articulated the various directions in which co-creation could and should provide benefits for companies and customers, such as improving consumption and usage experiences (Gentile et al., 2007; Payne et al., 2008) and stimulating product and service innovation". Point 10: "Value co-creation has a significant role to play in business strategy for market opportunity development across the markets (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004b). Value co-creation is important for new product development (NPD) and opening new trajectories across the length and breadth of marketing domain". Point 17: "Future competition centers on personalized interaction with customers to co-create value (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Praha- lad and Krishnan, 2008). Moreover, the customer–firm interaction no longer limits in traditional service sector or marketing activities. Rather, companies may co-create value with customers alone the customer participative chain (Zhang and Chen, 2006), from the co-development of new products, to production, assembly, distribution, retail, after sales service and usage". Point 18: "Customer becomes a value co-creator, resulting in a system of value co-creation. There are two distinguishing features of such a new system. First, companies take customers as a partner or co-producer instead of an external element (Firat et al., 1995). The changing role of customer from an external element to a co-producer can be realized by a series of co-creation activities as illustrated in the customer participative chain....  Second, co-creation value with customers becomes a new source of competence for businesses strategies (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). From operations management point of view, these new competitive capabilities include customerization capability and the service capability". Point 20: "Consumers may co-create value not only by participating in the market or company, but also by outflanking companies or marketers through defiant or oppositional consumption practices, such as consumer empowerment (Denegri-Knott et al., 2006; Kozinets and Handelman, 2004); and consumer resistance (Dalli and Corciolani, 2008; Holt, 2002; Kozinets, 2002a; Pongsakornrungsilp et al., 2008); or cultural hijacking". Point 22: "IT-based co-creation of value encompasses the idea that the IT value created is realized through actions of multiple parties and that this value emanates from robust collaborative relationships among firms (Kohli and Grover, 2008). Furthermore, to sustain IT-based co-creation, there must be incentives for parties to participate and equitably share the emergent value (Kohli and Grover, 2008). These conditions that differentiate IT-based co-creation from IT-based value alone explain why IOIS [interorganizational information systems] implemented to support SCC [supply chain collaboration], usually called supply chain collaboration systems (SCCSs), actually foster IT based co-creation of value".
Variable 4: Learn from value co-creation practices	Point 3: "The concept of producing value with clients, even when interviewees were prompted in a casual way to do so by interviewers, did not resonate in any clear consistent way. Indeed, on several occasions ...., interviewees essentially denied the relevance of the concept". Point 7: "The co-creation of value is contingent on buyer–seller interaction as the ‘locus of value creation’ (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004, p. 10), and has been suggested to be the raison d’être of interaction and business relationships (Vargo, 2009). However, value co-creation has not yet been rigorously analysed (Grönroos & Voima, 2013) and the processes involved in its implementation remain unclear".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on value co-creation. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on value co-creation and its interpretation

By relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on value co-creation, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, four of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of value co-creation. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative.  For further information on value co-creation, readers are referred to the Literature on value co-creation Facebook page.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in value co-creation. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study value co-creation in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as value co-creation in Business Management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Andreu, L., I Sánchez and C. Mele. 2010. "Value co-creation among retailers and consumers: New insights into the furniture market" Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 17, Elsevier: 241-250.

2.      Baumann, J. and K.L. Meunier-FitzHugh. 2015. "Making value co-creation a reality - exploring the co-creative value processes in customer-salesperson interaction" Journal of Marketing Management 31(3-4): 289-316.

3.      Bharti, K., R. Agrawal and V. Sharma. 2014. "What drives the customer of world's largest market to participate in value co-creation?" Marketing Intelligence & Planning 32(4), Emerald: 413-435.

4.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

5.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

6.      Galvagno, M. and D. Dalli. 2014. "Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review" Managing Service Quality 24(6), Emerald: 643-683.

7.      Hadaya, P. and L. Cassivi. 2012. "Joint collaborative planning as a governance mechanism to strengthen the chain of IT value co-creation" Journal of Strategic Information Systems 21, Elsevier: 182-200.

8.      Lehrer, M., A. Ordanini, R. DeFillippi and M. Miozzo. 2012."Challenging the orthodoxy of value co-creation theory: A contingent view of co-production in design-intensive business services" European Management Journal 30, Elsevier: 499-509.

9.      Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

10. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

11. Literature on value co-creation Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-value-co-creation-464279543951477/).

12. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

13. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].

14. Pongsakornrungsilp, S. and J.E. Schroder. 2011. "Understanding value co-creation in a co-consuming brand community" Marketing Theory 11(3), Sage: 303-324.

15. Tynan, C., S. McKechnie and C. Chhuon. 2010. "Co-creating value for luxury brands" Journal of Business Research 63, Elsevier: 1156-1163.

16. Zhang, X. and R. Chen. 2008. "Examining the mechanism of the value co-creation with customers" Int. J. Production Economics 116, Elsevier: 242-250.