Leveraging Emergent Social Interactions for Value Co-Creation on Transaction Platforms

Transaction platforms supporting the exchange of services and products between actor groups are the foundation of many new business models. Attracting enough actors by propositioning value is crucial for the success of transaction platforms. Therefore, the proper design of value creation mechanisms is a pre-condition to be successful. Initially, the focus of value creation was on network effects, but now the interactions between the actors are being examined more closely. Emergent social interactions (ESI) – are initiated by users on their initiative and are not subject to top-down planning. However, their impact on value creation on transaction platforms has not been researched in depth. Therefore, our paper investigates how emergent social interactions contribute to value co-creation mechanisms on transaction platforms. We apply a Service-Dominant Logic (S-D logic) theoretical lens and create a framework that describes the impact of emergent social interactions on value co-creation. Our framework integrates the moderation of ESI-based value-co-creation by market properties. Based on the framework, platform designers and entrepreneurs can better decide on the design of trans-action platforms in general and the employment of emergent social interactions. Our theoretical contribution paves the way to developing methods for designing transactional platforms using emergent social interactions respecting the context set by market properties.