Our paper with my co-author, Prof. Venkat Ramaswamy, “Digitalized Interactive Platforms: Turning Goods and Services into Retail Co-Creation Experiences” has been published in Marketing Intelligence Review‘s Special Issue on the Future of Retailing.
In this paper, geared towards a sophisticated managerial audience, we argue that retailing has become a field of value co-creation. Instead of “having value” in the traditional sense, retailers rather offer means for “creating value” through interactions. Shoppers co-create and contribute through their different views of the created value and through their specific interactions on digital and mobile devices and in social networks. Consequently, retailers are more and more faced with the challenge of purposefully designing their offerings as digital interactive platforms (DIPs) for interactional value creation. This movement spans the retail landscape from omnichannel store environments and smart-connected retailing to entire retail ecosystems. We make several recommendations for those interested in reinventing retail offers.