Creating Customer Value in a Service-Dominant Environment

Master’s Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, German Graduate School of Management and Law gGmbH, language: English, abstract: Dynamic capabilities and their impact on a firm’s performance are both topics that are gaining increasing attention in business literature and in practice. The concept of dynamic capabilities refers to organizational features or practices that a firm has developed to cope with a changing and uncertain market environment in a better way than its competitors and consequently sustain its competitive advantage. This Master’s thesis contributes to theory and practice in several domains. Drawing on the literature about customer value, service-dominant logic and dynamic capabilities, it investigates how the absorptive capacity approach can be used to (co-)create customer value in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in a service-dominant environment. The thesis provides guidance to practitioners by building up a framework that reflects how absorptive capacity can be used to co-create value in a B2B relationship. The case of SKPnet, an SAP service and solution provider from Germany, illustrates the practical application of this concept.