Identifying Causes of Value Co-Destruction : The Swedish Grocery Retail Industry

Sammanfattning

The Swedish grocery retail industry may seem as merely a transactional, goods-dominant industry. However, it has shown to be reliant on long-term relationships in a rapidly changing environment due to it being a very price sensitive industry. Due to the reliance of relationships, the actors extensively co-create activities of value. Nonetheless, they are also exposed to potential negative outcomes. Within the service-dominant logic framework such situations can be explained by value co-creation and value co-destruction. Previous research mostly focuses on value co-creation (VCC) leaving value co-destruction (VCD) behind which has shown need for more empirical evidence. Furthermore, research has not studied this in the grocery retail context leaving a gap in the literature.Therefore, this thesis explores how value is expressed in the Swedish grocery retail with a focus on what causes the negative outcomes of VCD, analysed from the supplier’s side of the relationship. By conducting semi-structured interviews, the thesis found several reoccurring causes to VCD. Some of these relate to what previous studies in other contexts have found to be causes such as relational issues. However, one of the main causes related to market conditions stands out as previous studies have not identified them as causes of VCD.