Artificial intelligence (AI) and value co-creation in B2B sales: Activities,actors and resources

Abstract

Continuous advances in information technologies, such as Artificial intelligence (AI), are opening up new and exciting opportunities for value co-creation between economic actors. However, little is known about the mechanisms and the process of value co-creation enabled by AI. While scholars agree that AI technology significantly changes human activities and human resources, currently we do not have an adequate understanding of how humans and AI technology interact in value co-creation. This is the central phenomenon investigated in this article. Specifically, using Service-Dominant Logic (S-DL) as a lens, this study investigates the activities, roles and resources that are exchanged in Al-enabled value co-creation, using the creation of competitive intelligence as a research context. The analysis suggests that Al-enabled value co-creation processes are complex interactions between human and non-human actors who perform any of six different roles either jointly or independently. This article contributes to SD-L and provides a deeper understanding of the activities (the ‘how’), the actors (the ‘who’), and the resources (the ‘what’) in Al-enabled value co-creation, thus helping to close an identified gap in the literature.