Daniele Dalli

Critical perspectives on consumers’ role as ‘producers’: Broadening the debate on value co-creation in marketing processes

This special issue continues the critical engagement with the popular discourses of Prahalad’s value co-creation paradigm and Vargo and Lusch’s service-dominant logic of marketing. The intensity of the debate among marketing scholars over these two marketing and management concepts demonstrates how much is at stake — conceptually and politically — when the roles of consumer and producer become blurred. Economic concepts of value, ownership, consumption, and production need to be redefined, and political ideas of the relationship between the social and the economic require addressing in the age of cognitive, or as we call it, collaborative capitalism. In addition to these broad theoretical challenges, the contributions in this issue zoom in on what arguably constitutes the central question for our specific field: What are the implications of a collaborative capitalism for understanding the place of marketing techniques in value creation? As with all good scholarship, the essays in this issue do not provide definitive answers but instead lead to a more elaborate set of questions. By doing so, they broaden the critical engagement with value co-creation in marketing.

Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarize and classify extant research and to better understand the past, present, and future state of the theory of value co-creation. Its main objectives are: to identify the different theoretical perspectives and research streams that characterize and define the co-creation literature, and to highlight the connections between them; to look for emerging trends and gaps in the literature by comparing the most recent papers with those representing the fields core. Design/methodology/approach – The paper relies on bibliometric data: co-citation techniques were employed to select, analyze, and interpret citation patterns within the co-creation literature. Findings – The paper identified two main clusters, as well as specific research streams and common themes, representing scholarly journals’ publications on co-creation over the past years. These research streams and themes apply three different theoretical perspectives: service science, innovation and technology m...

Gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange at Bookcrossing.com: new insights from a qualitative analysis

Purpose – Through an empirical analysis of a consumption community, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the theories of gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange should not be kept separated but integrated into a unifying model. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides new evidence about Bookcrossing.com, whose members share and give books as gifts; that is, physical goods rather than digital ones as in most of the communities considered in the literature. This community is analysed with qualitative tools, such as netnography, personal interviews and participant observation. Findings – The main result of the analysis of Bookcrossing is that gift-giving is not the only process responsible for value creation and distribution in consumption communities: sharing and commodity exchange also play a role. Furthermore, the paper provides new evidence about aspects of gift-giving and sharing that have received limited attention in the literature: collective reciprocity and anonymous sharing....

Le relazioni strategiche tra industria e distribuzione

This work aims at analyzing the strategic dimension of industry-trade relationships, where it is to the advantage of both industry and trade to replace traditional market relations with cooperation. After a review of the existing literature, the various ways industry and trade can manage their relations are considered and the conditions in which such collaboration can take place are also discussed. The paper ends by presenting the distributive model recently introduced by Olivetti, which no doubt can be viewed at as a clear example of industry-trade cooperation.

Marketing e intangibles per la competitività delle medie imprese italiane

Il paper analizza il ruolo del marketing soprattutto nelle sue componenti piu intangibili nelle strategie competitive delle medie imprese industriali italiane di successo. In particolare, si individuano le scelte di posizionamento di queste imprese e si esamina attraverso quali politiche di branding, pricing e comunicazione e quali relazioni di canale esse sono realizzate. Finalita ultima del paper e l’identificazione dei modelli di successo nella gestione del marketing e l’analisi dei casi mira ad evidenziare come a) l’eccellenza di marketing segue a un generale recupero di competitivita che si basa sul distacco dai modelli imprenditoriali tradizionali e sull’adesione a un modello d’impresa manageriale che gestisce direttamente il rapporto con i mercati, b) l’eccellenza di marketing esprime di rado una via italiana al marketing in senso stretto, quanto piuttosto una corretta applicazione dei principi del marketing tout court in grado di valorizzare il patrimonio di risorse cui sono applicati. Sul piano metodologico il paper si avvale dell’analisi dei risultati di 29 casi di studio di medie imprese con performance superiori alle medie dei rispettivi settori (alimentari, prodotti per la persona, prodotti per la casa, meccanica leggera, cantieristica). La ricerca e stata promossa dalla Societa Italiana di Marketing e ad essa hanno partecipato 29 gruppi di ricerca di 21 atenei diversi.

Le marche sgradite: l'altra faccia delle preferenze del consumatore. Costruzione e validazione di una scala di misurazione

Introduzione I consumatori amano alcune marche, per altre manifestano una sostanziale indifferenza e per altre ancora esprimono valutazioni, opinioni e – talvolta – veri e propri sentimenti negativi. Un po’ come con le persone, gli individui mostrano simpatia, indifferenza o antipatia verso i beni di consumo e le relative marche. C’e chi disprezza una marca perche rappresenta uno stile di vita o un gruppo sociale sgradito, o chi disapprova le politiche di marketing dei gruppi multinazionali, o chi – piu semplicemente – non ama una marca perche la ritiene di qualita scadente, o anche chi ha avuto una brutta esperienza con un prodotto e non lo ricomprera piu. In alcuni di questi casi, il consumatore si limita a modificare il proprio comportamento d’acquisto, ad esempio comprando meno frequentemente o sostituendo la marca in questione. In altri casi assume un ruolo attivo nella comunicazione interpersonale, trasferendo ad altri le proprie opinioni. Talvolta cio prende la forma di attivita organizzate (ad esempio le comunita del consumo critico), altre volte ci si limita al passaparola.

From Ownership to Sharing, Through Barter Communities

Recent literature, as well as practice, highlights the growing importance assumed by new forms of access to consumption resources, such as renting, sharing, and swapping (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012; Bardhi and Eckhart 2012; Belk 2010). Free and upon payment systems grew and are integrating the consolidated buy and own approach: Zipcar, Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Bookcrossing. These forms differ from traditional market transactions in many respects (Humphreys and Giesler 2007). For example, consumers often access goods, services, and information without purchasing or possessing them. The development of the Internet made access based consumption systems viable and attractive.

Strategic Relationships between Manufacturers and Distributors

The aim of this research is to further investigate the strategic nature of the relationships between manufacturers and distributors (a.k.a. the industry and the trade world), in a context where traditional market relations are replaced with cooperation for the advantage of both the industry and trade. After reviewing the existing literature, we will consider how manufacturers and distributors do manage their relationships and we will discuss the various conditions of said cooperation. Our contribution will be concluded by the presentation of the distribution model recently introduced by Olivetti, which offers a significant case study of the development of relationships between manufacturers and distributors.

La servitization dei prodotti

Il capitolo fornisce una disamina ed un aggiornamento rispetto alle pratiche aziendali sul fenomeno della servitizzazione, ovvero il graduale, ma significativo) incremento della dimensione di servizio nelle relazioni cliente-fornitore, con particolare riferimento alle aziende manifatturiere.