Co-creating value through demand and supply integration in senior industry-observations on 33 senior enterprises in Taiwan

Objective: With global population aging, great business opportunities are driven by the various needs that the elderly face in everyday living. Internet development makes information spread faster, also allows elderly and their caregivers to more easily access information and actively participate in value co-creation in the services. This study aims to investigate the designs of value co-creation by the supply and demand sides of the senior industry.

Design: This study investigated senior industry in Taiwan and analyzed bussiness models of 33 selected successful senior enterprises in 2013. We adopted series field observation, reviews of documentations, analysis of meeting records and in-depth interviews with 65 CEOs and managers.

Setting: Thirty-three quality enterprises in senior industry.

Participants: Sixty-five CEOs and managers in 33 senior enterprises.

Interventions: None.

Main outcome measures: Value co-creation design, value co-creating process.

Results: We constructed a conceptual model that comprehensively describes essential aspects of value co-creation and categorized the value co-creation designs into four types applying for different business models: (i) interaction in experience spaces co-creation design, (ii) on-site interacting co-creation design, (iii) social networking platform co-creation design and (iv) empowering customers co-creation design. Through value co-creation platform design, the senior enterprises have converted the originally passive roles of the elderly and caregivers into active participants in the value co-creation process.

Conclusions: The new paradigm of value co-creation designs not only promote innovative development during the interactive process, lead enterprises reveal and meet customers' needs but also increase markets and profits.