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Designing for mobile value co-creation—the case of travel counselling

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the development of a mobile service as extension of travel agencies’ sales channels, fundamentally driven by the notion of value co-creation. Design goals are directly linked to the understanding of travel counselling as practical value co-creation and to the concern to progress this understanding throughout the travel customer cycle. Customers as well as travel agencies benefit from a mobile service rooted in value co-creation. Mobile service applications which target a service provision which furthermore is in line with the core competency of a travel agency (advice-giving and continuously accompany the customer) are scarce. Taking this as a starting point, we propose a mobile service and system design which provides a travel customer with continuing support on the trip, suitable to complement a lively, ongoing customer-firm interaction which enables the co-creation of value, ultimately targeting increased customer retention and loyalty.

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Notes

  1. http://news.kuoni.ch/2010/11/02/kuoni-fuehrt-das-einzigartige-beratungstool-reisekompass-ein/

  2. http://www.ricksteves.com/

  3. http://english.ctrip.com/

  4. http://www.travelload.de/

  5. http://www.siri.com/

  6. see appendix for Attrakdiff2-questionnaire addressing pragmatic and hedonic stimulation quality (Hassenzahl et al. 2003)

  7. Items regarding the hedonic quality of communicating a certain identity by the system or through system use as well as pure attractiveness of the system have not been applied since the design was most aimed at advancing HQ-S and PQ.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate Michael Keller for implementing the prototype system and his input during earlier stages of this research.

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Correspondence to Gerhard Schwabe.

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Responsible Editor: Hans-Dieter Zimmermann

Appendix

Appendix

Attrakdiff2-questionnaire (Hassenzahl et al. 2003) provides, inter alia,Footnote 7 semantic differentials for pragmatic quality (PQ) and hedonic quality of stimulation (HQ-S) (see Table 2) Table. While the pragmatic quality dimension reflects characteristics that are predominantly of instrumental value and are primarily directed at supporting a certain purpose related to the fulfillment of certain tasks (Hassenzahl 2010), hedonic quality addresses general psychological needs of personal and social development beyond the pragmatic quality aspect.

Table 2 Attrakdiff2 semantic differentials

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Schmidt-Rauch, S., Schwabe, G. Designing for mobile value co-creation—the case of travel counselling. Electron Markets 24, 5–17 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-013-0124-8

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