The role of feedback in a service ecosystem : A qualitative study on facilitative and reactive resource integration in the gaming industry

Sammanfattning

The service ecosystem is an arguably new concept with minimal research on the function of feedback between actors. Furthermore, the service ecosystem concept shares many similarities with the gaming industry, but existing research on game development from a business perspective is limited even though co-creation and feedback is a central part of it. This paper explores this overlap and investigates how feedback functions, and is facilitated, as part of a service ecosystem within the gaming context by conducting a qualitative study with focus on game developers perspective. The study explores this topic based on semi-structured interviews conducted in Sweden. The transcripts of the interviews are analysed using the Deductive Qualitative Analysis (DQA) method. In addition to this, operationalising terms and a theoretical lens consisting of relevant concepts are used for the analysis. The findings show that feedback is used between players and game developers by creating a continuous feedback-loop, which allows a constant co-creation of the services value. Findings also show that feedback is facilitated in multiple ways, such as providing tools for the consumers to facilitate further resource integration, usage of social media to improve the resource integration between actors within the ecosystem, as well as catering to consumers' motivations. Additionally, emergent findings provide further insight on how co-destruction is a part of feedback and how it exists within a service ecosystem. Lastly, the study provides a deeper understanding to the existing literature on service ecosystems, as well as provides insight on how feedback functions within a service ecosystem.