Value Co-Creation in Services: An Economic Perception on the State of the Art in Economics, I.C.T. vs. Marketing

The World Trade Organization (WTO) states that almost two-thirds of the global output produced and almost 20 percent of the global trade accounts for the upcoming “service sector”. Since many products now are transformed into services, the old fashioned dichotomy between product and service has been replaced by the current service - product continuum business function.In pure economics, it was quite safe, so far, that the output produced “Q”, represented by famous production function(s) (i.e. Cobb-Douglas) would be a tangible good. Now the production of services displays the same level of diversity pending upon capital intensity, level of innovation and growth prospects.A service system can be defined as a dynamic value co-creation scheme of combined resources that creates and delivers value. Two service systems are shortly analyzed here, e-health and tourism services.We conclude upon the needed quantification of the value co-creation process, in order to produce concrete experimental outcomes, in terms of the positive scientific foundations of economics, thus affecting the economic efficiency of service production, along the lines of transaction cost economics.