1st ICAI 2020

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2020

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

the authors coincide that the central role in the process of value creation is customer involving and engagement. 1.1 Value Co-creation Concept An integrated and coordinated set of commitments designed to utilize the core competencies of a company to gain a competitive advantage characterizes the value creation strategy. By successfully defining and implementing it, a company can achieve strategic competitiveness (Ireland, Hitt, 1999; Hitt et al., 2007; Sirmon et al., 2011; Hitt et al., 2011; Hanson et al., 2016). Significant factors for achieving strategic competitiveness can be business and market oriented (knowing the customer’s needs effectively) or using value and offering innovative products and services. In today’s world of shared information, it is becoming increasingly important to engage customers in co-creation of value, which can greatly help companies to develop their strategic competitiveness. The perception and design of value are two key perspectives of the conceptual discussion on value creation of customers (Martelo Landroguez et al., 2013). The first considers the customer’s angle and is based on the perceived customer value literature, the second focuses on suggesting customer values as strategic tools for positioning and managing value creation at the customer. The perception of the value of the customer reflects the results of the “purchase”, which is a key motivation for the customer (Sheth et al., 1991). From the vendor’s point of view, customer value suggestions are designed to resonate with these preferred results. Both views have general theoretical roots that are transplanted into the business process. An analysis of literature on the issue of value co-creation shows that value perceived by customers distinguishes different dimensions, depending on the context of research and its intentions. In the process of value co-creation, the customer gains additional benefits. Due to co-creation, customers receive values such as satisfaction, brand confidence, brand commitment, reduced consumption costs, new relationships, etc. (Van Doorn et al., 2010). Moreover, the literature provides definition of 8 customer variables that allow involvement in co-creation of value: objective and scope, target orientation, information and knowledge exchange, commitment, communication, people, trust, ownership (Petri, Jacob, 2016). Additional company resources can also be integrated into customer value: co-promotion, co-distribution, co-development, co-production, co-experience, co-design, co-disposal, co- maintenance, co-pricing (Saarijärvi et al., 2013). Co-creation of value can be realized in every subject in the supply chain and in different parts of the sales process, pre-sales involving product research and development, but also after-sales when maintenance services come into play. Saarijarvi et al. (2013) stress that co-creation and value creation mean that business value and consumer value are created by different authorities through different forms of activity (B2B, B2C, C2B or C2C). Since the value chain cannot be managed according to the description of Porter’s linear chain (Porter, 1985) due to the gradually increasing influence of all factors operating on the market, the description of the relationships of individual companies can be expressed more precisely and in detail by imaginary networks referred to as multiindustry value chains. This area with the impact on value co-creation and automotive industry was more discussed in previous studies (Mráček et al., 2013, Zich, 2014, Svobodová, 2017).

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