Customer Value Co-Creation: Environmental Sustainability as a Tourist Experience

Abstract

Increasingly, environmental sustainability has become an important consideration for customer value co-creation, which is collaboration between a firm-provider and its customers to jointly create value. Our research question is therefore “how does customer value co-creation (CVC) enhance environmental sustainability?” We argue that attention to CVC globally would significantly enhance environmental sustainability in emerging markets. The findings of the study revealed that firms that do not enhance customer engagement and their environmental sustainability will lose patronage. Secondly, the attitude of most of these tourists who continually visit unclean tourism destinations such as littered beaches and polluted water bodies would continue to make these TDs not improve in their environmental products, hence, performing poorly in environmental sustainability performance. This study makes important contributions to research and practice of connecting customer value co-creation to environmental sustainability in emerging markets. Our study finds out that CVC in emerging markets can result in environmental sustainability.