Brand Value Co-Creation on Social Media: How and Why Consumers Engage in Co-Creation - A Netnographic Study Investigating a Consumer Perspective on Value Co-Creation

Abstract

Social media has elevated consumers' role in the process of brand value creation, emphasizing the view that value is co-created. Previous research has provided conceptualizations and broad descriptions, leaving a lack of empirical research. This study uses Netnography to investigate brand value co-creation on social media from a consumer perspective, to provide rich, descriptive empirical data on how and why consumers engage in these processes. Through the use of the Customer Co-Creation Value (Merz et al., 2018) framework of consumers skills and motivations as well as Kozinets (1999) customer categorization for involvement, our qualitative data provides an increased understanding of consumers actual practices during brand value co-creation in brand communities on social media. This study contributes with the addition of curiosity, dissatisfaction and nostalgia to consumer motivations and by developing a model that summarizes how and why consumers co-create brand value on social media based on involvement and type of brand. Finally, it contributes to the literature by discussing the concept of value-in-use from a social media perspective.