Actor Engagement as Marketing Objective in Service Ecosystems – Empirical Insights and Conceptualisations at Different Levels of Analysis

Titelangaben

Schönberner, Jan:
Actor Engagement as Marketing Objective in Service Ecosystems – Empirical Insights and Conceptualisations at Different Levels of Analysis.
Bayreuth , 2022 . - XI, 245 S.
( Dissertation, 2022 , Universität Bayreuth, Rechts- und Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät)

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Abstract

In service management and marketing, the question of how to engage customers and other relevant actors becomes increasingly important. Customer and actor engagement is understood as social and economic actors’ contributions to an organisation exceeding typical roles and transactional behaviours. From a corporate perspective, a key marketing objective is to foster the engagement of customers and other actors. Customer and actor engagement facilitated by virtual and physical engagement platforms leads to increased revenues, reputation, and cost savings. This emphasises the active role of customers’ and other actors’ as contributors to the creation of value for companies and organisations. Therefore, value co-creation is an appropriate theoretical foundation for addressing this phenomenon because it focuses on various actors’ resource exchanges to co-create value in service ecosystems. Value is always co-created by the interactions of multiple actors. However, value co-creation is a theory on a higher level of abstraction. Thus, applying concepts, such as actor engagement and engagement platforms, is essential to break down abstraction and enable accessibility for empirical research. Engagement platforms are virtual and physical touchpoints. They are provided by focal actors to enable and facilitate actors’ interactions and are embedded in service ecosystems. Although the concepts of actor engagement and engagement platforms have been introduced into the service management and marketing literature, there remain several calls for further research. Therefore, this doctoral thesis aims to advance the understanding of how actors and engagement platforms are interconnected within service ecosystems and how actors’ resource exchange is facilitated by engagement platforms. Thus, the following research question is addressed: How does actor engagement in terms of exchanging resources on engagement platforms contribute to value co-creation in service ecosystems? This doctoral thesis uses empirical insights to extend the theoretical conceptualisations of actor engagement at different levels of analysis. Hence, the analyses were conducted at organisational and dyadic levels (intra- and micro-levels) as well as in triadic relationships and networks (meso- and macro-levels) to allow for a multi-perspective consideration of the research question. As the research context, sport sponsorship and sport management in a broader sense were selected as specific parts of the service industry.

Abstract in weiterer Sprache

In service management and marketing, the question of how to engage customers and other relevant actors becomes increasingly important. Customer and actor engagement is understood as social and economic actors’ contributions to an organisation exceeding typical roles and transactional behaviours. From a corporate perspective, a key marketing objective is to foster the engagement of customers and other actors. Customer and actor engagement facilitated by virtual and physical engagement platforms leads to increased revenues, reputation, and cost savings. This emphasises the active role of customers’ and other actors’ as contributors to the creation of value for companies and organisations. Therefore, value co-creation is an appropriate theoretical foundation for addressing this phenomenon because it focuses on various actors’ resource exchanges to co-create value in service ecosystems. Value is always co-created by the interactions of multiple actors. However, value co-creation is a theory on a higher level of abstraction. Thus, applying concepts, such as actor engagement and engagement platforms, is essential to break down abstraction and enable accessibility for empirical research. Engagement platforms are virtual and physical touchpoints. They are provided by focal actors to enable and facilitate actors’ interactions and are embedded in service ecosystems. Although the concepts of actor engagement and engagement platforms have been introduced into the service management and marketing literature, there remain several calls for further research. Therefore, this doctoral thesis aims to advance the understanding of how actors and engagement platforms are interconnected within service ecosystems and how actors’ resource exchange is facilitated by engagement platforms. Thus, the following research question is addressed: How does actor engagement in terms of exchanging resources on engagement platforms contribute to value co-creation in service ecosystems? This doctoral thesis uses empirical insights to extend the theoretical conceptualisations of actor engagement at different levels of analysis. Hence, the analyses were conducted at organisational and dyadic levels (intra- and micro-levels) as well as in triadic relationships and networks (meso- and macro-levels) to allow for a multi-perspective consideration of the research question. As the research context, sport sponsorship and sport management in a broader sense were selected as specific parts of the service industry.