The Score Is Not the Music: Integrating Experience and Practice Perspectives on Value Co-Creation in Collective Consumption Contexts

Abstract

In response to recent calls for deeper understanding of value co-creation between multiple actors, this article explores co-creation in collective consumption contexts. These are defined as settings within which multiple consumers, and optionally multiple other actors such as service personnel, are co-present (physically and/or virtually) and coordinate with one another during product/service consumption. To understand co-creation in such contexts, this article argues for an integration of practice-based and experience-based perspectives, because while collective coordination occurs via social practices, the value that results is by definition an individual experience. By studying an orchestral music context in which multiple consumers and service providers participate, the authors develop a framework dialectically relating co-creation practices to value. Four variables emerge influencing the relationship between co-creation practices and value: role rigidity, consumer heterogeneity conflict, participation access, and signposting. Value can be constrained by role rigidity and by consumer heterogeneity conflict between consumers of differing competence; mitigating this requires that service providers pay attention to participation access and signposting (guiding consumers to select and combine practices in line with their skills and competences). Overall, the findings show how practices shape not just coordination among consumers, but also social learning. Implications for service organizations include how to facilitate social learning between novices and experts so as to optimize value for all.