EMERGING APPROACHES AND FUTURE AVENUES IN MARKETING RESEARCH

This thesis focuses on the current marketing strategy literature and looks for the emerging approaches to marketing research with the intention of pinpointing future paths in the marketing field. It is composed of an introductory section and three articles. The preface explains the overall purpose of the study and briefly presents the main contents of the single-taken papers highlighting the links between them. The first paper can be located in the marketing strategy branch of knowledge, while the second and the third article on the value co-creation debate. The main research questions are: 1) How the three marketing strategy approaches can be explained in terms of characteristics? 2) How have firms been using outside-in, inside-out and mixed approaches through time? 3) Which definition/s of value is used in the value co-destruction literature? 4) What kinds of practices are related to the four forms of capital? 5) What kinds of practices are related to the interactional process between systems or actors and their resources integration? These questions are answered through three papers. Paper 1 replays to the first and second research question, while the third is answered by the Paper 2. Research question 4 and 5 are responded by the conjunct afford of Paper 2 and 3. Once the first paper showed the main characteristics of the marketing strategy approaches, basing my choice on the Paper 1 results, I pointed my attention on the combined use of marketing strategy approaches and the role of cooperation. Then, I tried to figure out the next steps in my marketing research, looking for future avenues. I directed the research towards the Service Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) which considers the cooperation as a starting point and it posits that value is co-created through interaction between firms and customers (Grönroos& Voima, 2013; Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008; Vargo, Maglio, & Akaka, 2008). Furthermore, I decided to observe the phenomenon of value co-creation from a Practice Theory (Bourdieu, 1990; Reckwitz, 2002) point of view because it allowed me to generate useful insights for both marketing scholars and practitioners. Practice Theory is a “body of work about the work of the body” (Postill & Bräuchler, 2010). This approach to social theory considers the human body as the link of a sequence of activities (i.e. practices) that actors perform with different levels of commitment, dexterity, and grace. While some practices are common across social space and time, others are based on volatile configurations that change over time (Postill & Bräuchler, 2010). For all these reasons, I observed the practices performed by the firm and its customers during the cooperative interactions. Although the concept of cooperation may suggest a positive interaction among firm and its customers (value co-creation), recent studies introduced the opportunity of generating negative outcomes (value co-destruction) (Plé & Chumpitaz Cáceres, 2010). Because of the negative consequence of the cooperation compared with the positive one is a runner-up topic and it is poorly studied, the last two papers of this thesis have the aims to increase the knowledge about value co-destruction practices during firm and customer iteration. Even more, the last paper of the thesis tests a model called Pra.v.d.a. (Lombardo & Cabiddu, 2016) and suggests an extended version capable of assessing value in both value co-creation and co-destruction context.