Harnessing Digital Services for Co-creating Sustainability Value in the Retail Servicescape

Abstract

While the importance of sustainable consumption is well acknowledged and consumers increasingly demand sustainable alternatives, the consumption of environmentally strenuous products continues to grow. Technological solutions have been discussed for addressing the misalignment between consumers’ attitudes and behavior. This study is the first to use the service-dominant logic lens to investigate how digital services may be harnessed to drive the co-creation of sustainability value in the retail industry. We conduct 10 semi-structured interviews with a Finnish retail company and its customers and reflect on the customers’ experiences with respect to the company’s value propositions in the servicescape. Our findings indicate that understanding and harnessing consumers’ personal sustainability goals may be the key to designing digital services that help mitigate the impacts of consumption through value co-creation (VCC). We propose a preliminary framework for sustainability VCC and value co-destruction (VCD) in the retail industry and discuss its implications.