A Social Identity Perspective of Customer Value Heterogeneity in Complex Industrial Solutions

Most industrial marketing literature embodies the assumption that value creation and delivery result in outcomes that occur at the firm level. While this may be so, few studies consider the impacts on individual actors of this subjective and phenomenological concept. Drawing on social identity theory, I build an argument in this paper that the participation and consequent perceptions of value delivery processes depend on the specific roles and social positions on individual participants through this process. I develop four archetypical social identities (overseer, thinker, project implementer and technical implementer) and explore their relationship with value creation and delivery processes. I source data through case studies of complex solutions in the Australian context.