B2B Customer Solutions: How do suppliers provide support for the lack of customer readiness in the co-creation process?

Abstract

 Extant conceptualisation of business-to-business (B2B) customer solutions depicts that customer and the supplier as equal parties in their readiness and ability to co-create value in solutions activities. The study draws on the co-creation phases of B2B customer solutions to explore how suppliers provide support for better co-creation in low customer readiness markets [LCRMs]. This research adopts an interpretive perspective and conducts 44 in-depth interviews with customers and suppliers of technology-based solutions originated in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector in Jordan. The findings show four distinct, but complementary roles are performed by the suppliers in the ICT sector to compensate for the lack of customer readiness to co-create solutions value. This study develops the co-creation theory through identifying the supplier’s role in a business context where the customer and provider are perceived unequally in the co-creation.

B2B Customer solutions, Value co-creation, Customer readiness, Arab markets, ICT sector.