Social Commerce And Value Co-Creation: Evidence From A Developing Country
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Date
2022-10
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University Of Ghana
Abstract
The economic potential of social commerce, an ecosystem of services facilitated by social media and other digital technologies, is apparent, with an estimated 2.46 billion social media users globally and a projected market opportunity of US$ 100 billion by 2030. Despite social commerce's immense financial potential, much more is still uncovered about how value is co-created. Social commerce is critical in Africa because it provides African youth with various jobs and value-creation opportunities. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of academic literature on social commerce value co-creation. Problematising previous social commerce and value co-creation literature reveal three interrelated gaps that need urgent research attention. First, there is arguably a skewed theorisation or lack of theorisation in social commerce research that explains the essential value outcomes of social commerce applications. Second, social commerce research lacks an explanation of the roles that various actors play in the social commerce ecosystem in co-creating value. Third, there is a lack of explanation about the mechanisms that generate value outcomes.
Consequently, this study formulates three research questions. (a) What are the actors’ resources and roles used and played during value co-creation within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana (b) What is the value co-creation mechanisms within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana? (c) What are the forms of value co-created within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana? Answering these questions contributes to achieving the research purpose of developing a framework that explains how value is co-created within Ghana’s social commerce ecosystem. This study utilises the Service-Dominant Logic to explain the resources and roles of actors, value co-creation mechanisms, and forms of value co-created within the social commerce ecosystem of a developing economy to achieve the research purpose. Furthermore, based on information systems value literature, this study conceptualises the outcomes of value co-creation in social commerce as symbolic value and functional value. The conceptualisations culminate in a research framework explaining how social actors integrate their resources during value co-creation. This study uses a Critical Realism-based qualitative case study of a Ghanaian company in the fashion industry to illustrate how social commerce is used in the co-creation of value. The use of a single case study afforded an in-depth examination of the phenomena that led to the development of a new theoretical framework on value co-creation in the social commerce ecosystem. As an example of a developing economy, Ghana presented an opportunity to look at flexible innovations that can improvise new solutions to fit changing situations rather than sticking to long-term plans.
Concerning the first research question, the findings indicate that social commerce actors performed two distinct roles during social commerce value co-creation; a collaborator role and an affiliate role. These roles are somewhat different from their formal roles and may be classified as Adaptive (i.e., actors who can adjust to changing conditions) or responsive (i.e., actors who perform actions in response to other actors’ actions). The findings on the resources used during social value co-creation reveal that different resources are unique and specific to an actor in a social commerce ecosystem. The findings also show how previous studies have assumed that resources are held entirely by the social actor of a service ecosystem, ignoring the resource potential of service platforms, which is the medium of interaction and held by all actors. Concerning the second research question, previous studies assumed that mechanisms occur at monodic levels and seem to overlook the possibility of value co-creation mechanisms to develop co-creative activities with networked actors. However, this thesis establishes that social commerce value co-creating mechanisms occur at three levels, namely, Monodic levels, Dyadic levels and Triadic levels. The monodic levels encompass how a single actor influences the functional processes underlying resource integration in social commerce value co-creation. Secondly, the dyadic levels entail how two social commerce actors influence the functional processes underlying resource integration in social commerce value co-creation. Lastly, the triadic levels concern the causal structures that underpin the functional processes of resource integration by three or more social commerce actors in value co-creation.
Concerning the third research question, this thesis identifies three dynamic and multidimensional co-created value categories: functional, symbolic, and platform value. This categorisation is not mentioned in the value co-creation literature because they assume that value is consistent across purchase, consumption and evaluation for all actors. First, functional value is the benefit of converting assets into tangible (and intangible) value. In this study, three forms of functional value are co-created. These are interactional value, economic value, and physical value. Second, symbolic value (e.g., positive brand image, online social capital, and reputation) is realised from the “signalling effect” of each actor’s presence on or affiliation with social commerce platforms. Symbolic value is achieved through experiences that help social commerce actors achieve social integration. The study uncovered three forms of symbolic value: exposure, social, and relationship building. Third, platform value, hitherto absent in the literature, is the unique value offered by the social commerce platform. In precis, the study reveals that, after social commerce actors decide to co-create value, the social commerce platform fosters collaboration and venue for co-creation activities. This study’s originality and contribution to research and practice are as follows. First, this study conceptualises and empirically illustrates a framework that explains various actors’ roles in co-creating value within the social commerce ecosystem. Identifying these roles generates a deeper explanation of how actors interact to co-create value. More importantly, this study’s explanation of social commerce roles is the discovery of two new actor roles, i.e., collaborator and affiliate, which is unique in social commerce literature.
Second, this study uncovers three value co-creation mechanisms, i.e., co-innovation, value co-seeking, and platform scaling. Hitherto, these remained unexplained. Furthermore, these unearthed mechanisms were identified at three levels: monodic, dyadic, and triadic. Further, this study unearths various forms of how social commerce platforms offer a unique value as “platform value” as a new co-created value beyond the functional and symbolic value reported in IS value literature. Hitherto, existing studies had conceptualised co-created value as either functional or symbolic. Platform value emanating from social commerce platforms is unique because it captures how actors coordinate their collaboration and interactions that facilitate innovation. Further, co-created value can be either be collective or customised. Additionally, there are value creation dependencies which mean value does not just happen it depends on the existence of certain actors and specific resources and processes and sometimes events. Finally, value expands because the social commerce ecosystem, by nature of its integration of actors, resources, and processes, creates a continuous flow of opportunities for the discovery of ideas and relationships which can yield new forms of co-created value.
These contributions have been published in two book chapters conference paper. One manuscript is also under preparation for submission to the International Journal of Information Management, an A* journal in the information systems discipline.
Description
PhD. Information Systems
Keywords
Developing Country, Social Commerce, Value Co-Creation