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Value Co-Creation

Value co-creation is the idea that value is not made by a company alone and handed to a passive customer, but is created jointly by the company and the customer. Prahalad and Ramaswamy described it as the “joint creation of value by the company and the customer” [1]. In sports, the same logic describes fans, clubs, leagues, sponsors and media building the experience together [2].

Key points

  • Value is created together by the organisation and the people it serves, not only inside the organisation [1].
  • The older view cast customers as a passive audience that paid for a ticket and watched [3].
  • Service-dominant logic places the co-creation of value at the centre of marketing [4][5].
  • Sport management has built its own frameworks on this idea, such as the sport value framework [2].
  • Research on sport events studies how context shapes what spectators co-create [6].

Origin

Prahalad and Ramaswamy popularised the concept in their 2000 Harvard Business Review article “Co-opting Customer Competence”, which opens with the image of a theatre where customers “paid for their tickets, sat back, and watched passively” [3][1]. They later defined co-creation as the joint creation of value by the company and the customer, so that the customer can co-construct the service experience to suit their context [1].

In 2004 Vargo and Lusch published “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing”, a foundational article on service-dominant (S-D) logic [5]. S-D logic tells firms to market with customers rather than to customers [4].

How it works in sports media

In the sport value framework, Woratschek, Horbel and Popp describe value in sport management as something created through interaction among several actors rather than delivered by one organisation [2]. A match, a broadcast or a social media thread has no fixed value before people take part in it: fans, clubs, leagues, sponsors and media all add to it.

Horbel and colleagues studied how the context of a sport event shapes the way spectators take part in co-creating their experience [6].

Examples

  • A fan posting a photo or opinion from a game and so promoting the event.
  • Supporters creating the atmosphere in the stands that the broadcast then sells.
  • Fans taking part in a club’s or an athlete’s story on social media.

Common questions

What is value co-creation in simple words?

It means that the company and the customer make the value together. The customer is a participant, not only a buyer [1].

Who introduced the term?

Prahalad and Ramaswamy popularised it in 2000 [3][1]. Vargo and Lusch built it into service-dominant logic in 2004 [5].

Why does it matter in sport?

Sport is consumed together with other people, so fans help make the product they watch. Sport management research uses co-creation to analyse this [2][6].

Related terms

Read more on Play of Values

Sources

  1. Wikipedia. (2026). Co-creation. Wikipedia. Link
  2. Woratschek, H., Horbel, C., & Popp, B. (2014). The sport value framework – a new fundamental logic for analyses in sport management. European Sport Management Quarterly, 14(1), 6–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2013.865776
  3. Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2000, January). Co-opting customer competence. Harvard Business Review. Link
  4. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (n.d.). What is S-D logic? sdlogic.net. Link
  5. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.68.1.1.24036
  6. Horbel, C., Popp, B., Woratschek, H., & Wilson, B. (2016). How context shapes value co-creation: Spectator experience of sport events. The Service Industries Journal, 36(11–12), 510–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2016.1255730

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