How Do Platform-Based Networks Shape Systemic Value Creation through Experiences?

Understanding how to create valuable experiences for consumers and firms has been a priority for marketing researchers and practitioners (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016) as experiences are increasingly responsible for creating competitive edge in contemporaneous markets (Duncan et al 2016; Pine and Gilmore 1998). New systemic (Akaka, Vargo, and Lusch, 2012) and network (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004) perspectives introduced a co-creative view of customer experiences, where customers are no longer considered as ‘passive’ receivers of an experience, but ‘active’ participants in the co-creation of their own experience (McColl-Kennedy et al 2017). As noted by De Keyser et al (2015), marketing thought is evolving towards a network-oriented view of the experience environment, hence emphasis on how multiple actors connect to each other is a more appropriate way to study CX in contemporary contexts. Following this call, we examine the role of platform-firms, i.e. the firms that mediate the online interactions happening in collaborative networks (Scaraboto 2015), in shaping the process of value creation through experiences in networked environments. Prior consumer research demonstrates that value can aggregate at a systemic level (Figueiredo and Scaraboto 2016) in platform-based environments when networked participants “integrate and exchange resources to co-create value for themselves and for others” (Akaka et al. 2012, 15). Hence, to understand how networked experiences create value, it is important to look beyond how an experience creates value for individual participants, focusing instead on how experiences aggregate to create value in networked environments. We ask: How can platform-based firms shape systemic value creation through experiences?