Service design as collaborative activity. What is the role of the customer?
2012 (English)In: ANZMAC 2012 Proceedings, Perth, WA, Australia: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science , 2012Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Service design is not yet a defined discipline and its approach is poorly captured and understood within the extant literature. This paper takes a first step and provides a closer understanding of how service design might be integrated in marketing theory and practices. By drawing upon recent developments in design, marketing and the service literature, it is argued that service design reordered its perspective towards a customer-centered and collaborative approach rather than being limited to closed R&D processes. This change of approach not only evolved from the developments in design theory towards a human-centered standpoint but particularly from relationship marketing and the related service literature which declared the customer as an active value-creator within the service system. Building on the assumption that the customer becomes an active participant during the value co-creation process, service design is suggested as a co-design platform with customers rather than a firm-internal design activity. Co-design can be described as the collective creativity of designers and participants not trained in design, working together throughout the whole span of a design process (Sanders and Stappers 2008). Further, it is proposed that customers in particular may account for the role of co-designers because through ongoing interactions with the firm, customers can become active and more knowledgeable relationship partners. Hence, interactions can act as both in service design, as a designable area and a design resource. This, however, demands a mind shift in marketing from managing relationships and defining the customer as passive recipients towards interacting in relationships and the notion that value-generating processes overlap through interactions with customers. Also, for future research it becomes necessary to examine what are the advantages and restrictions of co-design, specifically when customers participate as active co-designers.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Perth, WA, Australia: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science , 2012.
Keywords [en]
service design, co-design, service system, human-centered design, value creation
National Category
Business Administration
Research subject
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-63547ISBN: 9780646563305 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-63547DiVA, id: diva2:1141589
Conference
ANZMAC 2012 Conference, Adelaide, SA, Australia, 3-5 December, 2012
2017-09-152017-09-152019-06-17Bibliographically approved