Transforming Consumer Well-Being Through Service Ecosystems: The Case of Disruptive Events: An Abstract

Abstract

Mass protests, demonstrations, and armed conflict which are now known as the “Arab Spring” revolution have swept across countries such as Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. These disruptive events are occurrences which change over time (Giesler and Thompson’s 2016) and uncover rich service encounters within a complex service ecosystem (Blocker and Barrios 2015). To date, transformative service research (TSR) has attended to our understanding of service ecosystems. However, we argue that institutions (i.e., the norms, rules, meanings, symbols, and practices which connected actors share) and how service ecosystems evolve in disruptive events also warrant attention. Through 67 semi-structured interviews, this paper closely examines the role of consumption practices in challenging institutional boundaries during periods of disruptive conflict in Egypt, Libya, and Iraq. As outlined by Baron et al. (2018), in taking an institutional lens, we are able to delve deeper into the daily lives and activities of actors. We asked our respondents: How do they go about their daily consumption practices? How do they react to any institutional boundaries? And who do they interact with? We embed our analysis according to the macro (State), meso (community), and micro (individual) levels and apply typologies of formal and informal institutions and concepts surrounding incumbents and challengers to better understand the interrelationships (micro to meso) and intrarelationships (meso to meso) between actors within a service ecosystem. Firstly, we establish that social conflict theory can better contribute to understanding a service ecosystem across disruptive events. We found that two important concepts can help mediate conflict, namely, disruption and community building and disruption and consumer wellbeing. Secondly, through exploring the daily activities of various actors, we gained a deeper understanding of how the ordinary is made extraordinary during periods of conflict. We identify how challengers, adopting new norms and practices, opposed incumbents and mediated conflict in order to bring about a normality and well-being to themselves and the community.