02736nas a2200145   4500008004100000022001400041245003000055210002900085260004200114520234200156100001902498700001902517700001802536856003602554       2009                        eng d  a1913-610200aComponents of Co-creation0 aComponents of Cocreation  aOttawabTalent First Networkc11/20093 aValue co-creation is an emerging innovation, marketing and business paradigm describing how customers and users are seen as active participants in the design of personalized products, services and experiences. Often this participation is organised via the Internet to enable the opportunity for customers to integrate their knowledge, experience and skills into existing, modified or entirely new market offerings reflecting their personal preferences, needs and contexts. There is a growing body of literature dedicated to the discussion of value co-creation frameworks, mechanisms and processes. However, these typically focus on the study, discussion and analysis of a small number of cases using deep, ethnographic description of their practices aiming at conceptualization and categorization of the different types of interactions between end users, the firm and the value network. Although useful, such an approach misses the advantages of an empirically driven quantitative approach that benefits from larger size samples and is more appropriate for theory building through the development and testing of hypotheses. It is important, therefore, to seek the development of a research methodology that combines the benefits of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches for studying the nature of value co-creation.

The article provides a first attempt to identify the main research steps of such a methodology. It provides some preliminary results on the key components of value co-creation between firms and end customers based on the application of web search and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) techniques. The analysis of these preliminary results is then used as an opportunity to identify a number of research questions to be addressed in future research. The emerging research questions follow the inner logic of the value co-creation phenomenon as well as the nature of the results reported in this article. The specific nature of the results was found to be suitable for the application of small-N techniques such as the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) technique which combines the advantages of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. One of the main contributions of this article is to suggest and explore the possibility for using the QCA technique in future research on value co-creation.1 aAllen, Stephen1 aBailetti, Tony1 aTanev, Stoyan  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/301