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 of service engagement strategies.