Characterizing Ex situ Value: A Customer-Dominant Perspective on Value

Abstract

Customer value, an important requirement for the success of tourism, is commonly seen as a phenomenon co-created between the tourist and the tourism provider. Positioned in the customer-dominant logic, this paper focuses on the tourist’s perspective and introduces the notion of ex situ value formed outside of the tourist-provider’s interaction and the on-site experiences. The forthcoming qualitative study, which is conducted in the context of an online travel community, explores customers’ travel-related experiences within their own lifeworld. The main contribution is the notion of ex situ value, which involves individual and collective experiences and develops a nuanced view of value emerging in customers’ experiential lifeworld. Thus, the article invites researchers to expand the boundaries of value into the customer lifeworld domain and encourages tourism providers to consider the tourists’ contexts outside the standard measurements of value (tourist and provider interactions as well as on-site experiences) as sources of customer value.