Value Co-creation Ontology—A Service-dominant Logic Perspective

Marketing research apprises scholars in different disciplines of a paradigmatic reorientation from a traditional goods-dominant (G-D) to a service-dominant (S-D) logic. S-D logic re-conceptualizes the notion of economic exchange. The cornerstone of this reorientation is the concept of value co-creation—a collaborative process of reciprocal value creation among various actors. Owing to S-D logic’s significance, information systems (IS) research discusses its prospective implications on core elements of the IS knowledge base. However, an equivocal understanding of value co-creation’s foundations, semantics, and use emphasizes its underlying theoretical ambiguity in IS and marketing research. Through employing Methontology, a well-structured methodology to build ontologies, we develop a value co-creation ontology for IS from an S-D logic perspective. The developed ontology not only offers a multidisciplinary glossary of value co-creation’s constituent concepts, but also thoroughly depicts their relationships. The resultant ontology represents a first step toward reflecting S-D logic in IS analysis and design.