VALUE IN USE AND IN (SOCIAL) CONTEXT Analysing how social actors co-create value

Aim Recent insights from Service Dominant Logic (Edvardsson, Tronvoll and Gruber, 2011) call for further research on what is value in a (social) context. Such an issue highlights that although value cocreation is a widely researched topic, some concepts and mechanisms are neither conceptually clear nor empirically grounded. Indeed S-D Logic posits that goods and services are operand resources that customers integrate with other resources (operant and operand) in service provision activities, aiming to generate value-in-use (Vargo, Lusch, 2008; 2009) but how is value co-created by the engaged actors – with different values and intentions - during the service provision process?. This study addresses the challenges of defining the meaning and the essence of value according to an S-D logic ecosystems approach (Vargo, Akaka, 2012). It aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on where, how, for, and with whom value is co-created and assessed as we provide a better understanding of how value is co-created by social actors defining different concepts and meanings of value as well as a framework which links different concepts to each other.