Experience sharing

This conceptual paper continues the dialogue advancing the understanding of co-creation of value aligned to the actor-to-actor worldview (Vargo & Lusch, 2011 Vargo, S. L. and Lusch, R. F. 2011. It's all B2B … and beyond: Toward a systems perspective of the market. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(2): 181–187. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.06.026[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and builds on the work of Grönroos (2011 Grönroos, C. 2011. Value co-creation in service logic: A critical analysis. Marketing Theory, 11(3): 279–301. doi:10.1108/09564231111106893[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Ramaswamy (2011 Ramaswamy, V. 2011. It's about human experiences … and beyond, to co-creation. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(2): 195–196. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2010.06.030[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We introduce an effort-centric lens that interprets value as embedded in experience that is derived from individual efforts expended in co-creation processes. We conceptualise ‘experience sharing’ as a value creation effort for the direct benefit of others, ‘value-in-experience’ as an effort-based meaning of value creation, and ‘value initiators’ as actors who perform ‘experience sharing’. In turn, we put forward an integrated framework to expand our understanding of ‘co-creative’ interpretation of service provision.