How strategic design abilities address unmet value in service engagement strategies

Abstract

Purpose – Engaging with customers and addressing unmet value have become increasingly challenging within multi-stakeholder environments of service innovation. Therefore, this paper aims to address this challenge by studying how strategic design abilities address unmet value in service engagement strategies. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a qualitative inductive study at a multinational corporation and interviewed marketing
and design professionals on their innovation practices in service engagement strategies. Findings – From the inductive analysis, this study identified three strategic design abilities that effectively contribute to addressing unmet value
throughout the co-evolving process of service engagement: envisioning value, modelling value and engaging value. Based on this, this study proposes the emerging co-evolving loop framework of service engagement strategies.
Research limitations/implications – The limitation of this emerging theory is a lack of broad generalizability with mutual exclusivity or collective exhaustiveness across industries. A theoretical implication of the framework is the integration of strategic design and services marketing towards co-created engagement strategies.
Practical implications – The service engagement loop framework can be of great value to service innovation processes, for which an integrated, cross-functional approach is often missing. Social implications – The findings further suggest that next to a methodological skillset, strategic design abilities consist of a distinct mindset. Originality/value – This paper introduces strategic design abilities to address unmet value and proposes a novel co-evolving loop framework ofservice engagement strategies