Value co-destruction: exploring the misintegration of resources and its effects on firms' well-being

This study aims to gain an understanding, from the perspective of hotel employees and managers, of the phenomena in which value co-destruction results from a misintegration of resources between firms and customers. The interactions between actors often aim to integrate resources to attain co-creation. In the hospitality sector customers integrate their resources, such as time and money, with hotel offerings to co-create the best experience to increase firm and customer well-being. However, not all resource integration practices lead to the creation of desired values for all actors. Resources can become misintegrated when a failure occurs in one or all of the processes of resource integration, leading to value co-destruction. Value co-destruction may occur when an actor accidentally or intentionally misintegrates resources (Plé & Caceres, 2010). The concept of misintegration of resources refers to when actors fail to combine or apply resources in a way contrary to what they intend, as perceived by themselves or other actors. Value co-destruction has the potential to decrease firms’ well-being. However, extant research suggests that there are a limited number of studies that examine the relationship between value co-destruction and firms’ well-being. As such, this study will focus on this process and examine under what circumstances resource misintegration contributes to value co-destruction, leading to a reduction in firms’ well-being. A qualitative research method was used to analyse this relationship. This research method included semi-structured in-depth interviews complemented by a netnography method through customers’ reviews on hotel services from TripAdvisor. This study has identified four circumstances for resource misintegration. These circumstances can trigger value co-destruction, subsequently affecting firms’ well-being. Such effects may occur in instances where firms do not provide updated information about their services, fail to respond to customer requirements or complaints, or lack skilled employees. Resource misintegration was found to occur mostly in five resource categories. When resource misintegration takes place, potential value co-destruction can occur, highlighted by online negative reviews and bad reputations as a result of negative word-of-mouth.