The purpose of this study is to extend current understanding of disabling marketplaces by substantiating embodied interaction, between service providers and disabled consumers, as interlinked multimodal activities in a material environment. The study is based on three extensive datasets on service production and provider-consumer interactions, gathered from several public sector markets containing private service providers. Using different qualitative and semi-ethnographical methods, the study makes three contributions: i) a more embodied construct of disability, materialised in a conceptual typology of embodiment and materiality, advancing research into what disables consumers from being active members of marketplaces; ii) identifying themes of disabling marketplace interactions which contribute a more fine-grained understanding of the relationship between embodiment and how consumers experience vulnerability - an explanation of how consumers with disabilities appropriate space and ascribe meanings to a place; and iii) substantiating previous research into 'bodily dys-appearance'.

The Encyclopedia of Services is a ground-breaking resource that offers a unique overview of what constitutes the main source of wealth and employment in our contemporary economies, namely services. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

This article conceptualises how professionals, working according to customer involvement rationales in marketing contexts, experience and deal with the tension between their own identity, as regards having knowledge expertise, and the knowledge expertise they attribute to their customers. By relating the literature on professional identity to customer involvement in marketing, and by investigating this relationship in an empirical study of healthcare professionals influenced by customer involvement discourses, the article identifies the key underlying theoretical properties and mechanisms of professional reflexivity. A conceptual framework is outlined, displaying the key role of situated reflexivity by which means professionals enact ways of involving their customers, amidst a two-dimensional space defined by perceived professional and customer identities. It is argued that this conceptual framework details a social tension, between professionals and customers, that is highly visible in many service and marketing interactions and overlooked in marketing theory. It is argued that uncovering this tension adds to our understanding of why value is not always co-created in line with customer involvement rationales.

Purpose – Contemporary service and marketing research on value co-creation and value co-destruction assume a one-dimensional view on value,ranging from positive value co-creation, alignment and high value to negative value co-destruction, misalignment and low value. This limitation hasrecently led researchers to conceptually develop more dynamic spatial-temporal models of how value is formed during the interaction, e.g. in termsof different relationships between practice elements (procedures, understandings and engagements) both within and between actors in “valueformation spaces”. However, much of this research awaits validation and is in need of more details. This study aims to address this limitation withthe purpose of detailing how and why the mechanisms in such spaces are formed.Design/methodology/approach – Two different and interlinked typologies were analytically derived from previous research and applied onethnographically-inspired multi-perspective empirical data from a service combining health care and transport service ecosystems, using acombination of interviews, observations and service design methodologies. The design in combination with a practice theory perspective was usedto articulate crucial aspects related to understanding the dynamics of value co-formation for elaborative and illustrative purposes.Findings – The study contributes to service theory by conceptualizing as follows: a typology consisting of nine different configurations of practiceelements (within and between such elements) and eight possible directions that value formation can take, suggesting a theory that explains valueco-creation, value co-destruction and mixed cases.Research limitations/implications – Although the findings have been developed in a specific empirical context, they articulate a conceptualizationapplicable to many other service and marketing value co-formation settings.Practical implications – The typologies are conceptual tools to be used in identifying and measuring the alignment/misalignment of practiceelements in complex organizations. The empirical findings uncover service problems faced by disabled customers.Originality/value – The suggested typologies can guide research and practitioners in understanding and analysing value co-formation mechanismsin complex service settings

This study elaborates on the notion of value co-destruction when applied to complex service ecosystems of interconnected transport and healthcare services. By using a practice-theory perspective in a rich multiple-participant interview and observation study, the article shows that value creation is difficult to achieve, and that vulnerable travellers and patients can experience several problematic situations. It is argued that many crucial situations are linked to ecosystem gaps, in relation to typical practices such as booking, waiting, pick up and drop off, travelling and connecting. This article contributes by uncovering and explaining relatively non-harmonious aspects of service ecosystems, typically not imagined in contemporary value-creating service ecosystem research.

The aim of this conceptual article is to both provide a critical review of research into value co-destruction (VCD) and outline a common conceptual framework in order to better understand and guide future research into VCD and value co-creation (VCC). This review finds that the VCD stream of research has followed two lines of enquiry: one that highlights the role of resources and service systems and another that focuses on practices. It further finds that some prior research has argued that a direct and reciprocal relationship exists between VCD and VCC, captured in the concept of interactive value formation (IVF). A synthesizing IVF framework is outlined which suggests that the alignment and misalignment both within practices and in-between different practices determines IVF, that is, VCD and VCC. The framework further suggests that IVF is both enabled and constrained by resources and service systems.

In the managerial discourse, coaching is thought of, amongst other things, as a tool for achieving customer-oriented employees and for supporting employees in recognising opportunities for improving their job skills. This idea too often take for granted that being coached by a manager will automatically be experienced as valuable to the interactants. Although the positive potential of coaching is recognised, the bulk of research on managerial coaching has overlooked the mutuality, the co-creation aspect of coaching, and the potential of negative outcomes. In general, few studies address micro-practices of coaching and no studies have specifically focused on congruence regarding micro-elements of interactive coaching practices. This article addresses these weaknesses by drawing on both practice theory and an in-depth qualitative study of coaching sessions featuring instructors and bus/tram drivers in the public transport industry. Six overarching coaching practices are identified–i.e., checking, questioning, defusing, confirming, legitimising, and picturing. What is also identified is how specific elements of these practices–i.e., procedures, understandings, and engagements–are intertwined, resulting in either congruence or incongruence among the interactants. A theoretical framework is outlined, describing and explaining the essence of how coaching practices are constituted.

Research on how vulnerable consumers navigate various marketplaces and service interactions, developing specific consumer skills in order to empower themselves during such exchanges, has received inadequate attention. This paper contributes to this area by empirically drawing on a multi-perspective go-along travel study, consisting of a combination of in-depth interviews and observations of consumer and service provider interactions in mobility services. It addresses both factors that are a source of vulnerability and forms thereof during service interactions, thus unearthing critical mechanisms that explain why vulnerability comes into being. Further, the finding of four distinct forms of active coping strategies, building on the dimensions of proactiveness/reactiveness and explicit/implicit articulation, and how these are related to different forms of vulnerability, provides an understanding of coping with vulnerability during consumer and service provider interactions.

A traditional understanding of voluntary organizations with a social mission is that they are offering social services. In this article, this understanding is argued to be misleading. In a study of 59 social voluntary organizations (SVOs) an alternative view is proposed. Instead of offering social services, these organizations co-create sociality, and this is realized in collaboration with clients and in the contexts of social networks. This shift in understanding regarding what these organizations provide is mirrored in their marketing approach and managerial practice. The study is based on theory of organizational identity and service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and the findings advances our understanding of marketing approaches of SVOs, identifying the dialectical relation between organizational identity and managerial action, an organizational action embedded in integrative and excluding forces in the local society. The study also adds to research of transformative service research unfolding how service organizations create transformative services.