Customer to Customer Value Co-Creation in Healthcare

Abstract

Transformative service researchers adopted the value co-creation (VCC) idea to elucidate the patient’s active role in managing health. However, earlier studies are largely oriented towards a focus on service providers’ role in VCC processes, without duly attending the phenomena within the customer sphere. Thus, to address this gap, the current project adopts the Customer Dominant Logic (CDL) to understand value co-creation within health consumer’s world which assumes that despite being an equal partner in co-creation, customers subjectively realize value in isolation by re-creating their experiences with fellow customers. In the light of the above background, the study examines C2C value co-creation within two unique settings, i.e., Virtual Health Communities and Liminality, across 3 separate studies. The study 1 is focused on C2C value co-creation within social media health communities, which are inherently more conducive for enacting VCC. The study 2 looks at value co-creation during liminal situation (Covid19) where C2C VCC logics are implicitly visible. The study 3 empirically examines the importance of fellow consumers in the online space using social capital theory. It assumes that consumer co-creation behaviour is always influenced by the surrounding social system in which the actor is embedded. Here, it proposes a conceptual framework that is tested empirically using cross-sectional data. Studies 1 and 2 used Netnography and the study 3 applied a Structural equation modelling technique. The final sample includes 536 unique FB health community posts (study 1), 101 Covid19 survivor stories (study 2), and 360 survey responses collected via online diabetic consumers (study 3). In study 1, the project found 13 unique C2C VCC practices which are categorized under four groups based on the two-dimensional framework. In study 2, the study has revealed both individual and situational factors of consumer vulnerability. Willpower, optimism, spirituality, social support, compassion, traditional know-how, and technology were identified as the main operant resources used by limonoids (Covid19 survivors) to overcome vulnerability. Finally, in study 3, the study confirmed that all three social capital factors unique to the online health community, i.e., trust, perceived similarity, and familiarity, positively influence the key VCC behaviors such as information sharing, responsible, and helping behavior. Sense of belongingness is found to mediate the relationship between social capital and value cocreation behavior. The study also confirms that C2C VCC behaviors positively affects consumer well-being. The study advances the knowledge of the' customer sphere' of value co-creation. It has strong implications for health practitioners, policymakers, ICT managers and health consumers.