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Introduction
Cultural organisations, including museums, galleries, parks and gardens (both botanical and zoological), are increasingly redefining the role played by the consumer from a passive observer to an interactive partner in the cultural experience (Mencarelli et al. , 2010). The cultural sector is facing significant challenges, and there is tension in the sector between a curatorial orientation and one that focuses on the consumer experience (Gainer and Padanyi, 2002; Thomas and Nuttall, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to explore the way organisations collaborate with consumers to facilitate consumption of cultural experiences through a lens of co-production.
Co-production is imbedded in Service-Dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), which asserts that consumers are value co-creators and that value is created with and determined by the consumer in the consumption process (Lusch and Vargo, 2006a). An increasing acceptance of the S-D logic has seen the terms "co-creation" and "co-production" being used interchangeably (Etgar, 2008; Hoyer et al. , 2010; Payne et al. , 2008), although they are distinct concepts. The co-creation literature predominantly focuses on co-creation of value, with value derived through the use of a market offering and finally determined by the consumer (Lusch and Vargo, 2006b). The implication is that firms and consumers can collaborate to co-produce value propositions/market offerings, with this co-production process being a larger part of value co-creation. Whilst there is literature (Grönroos, 2011) that takes value in use perspective and suggests that organisations can engage with consumer usage processes and move beyond facilitating value to become part of consumers' value creation, this can only take place during the time of direct interactions with consumers. Such interactions may only be invited by the consumer, as the consumer is in charge of the value creation within the joint sphere (Gronroos and Ravald, 2011; Grönroos and Voima, 2012). Outside of such direct interactions, therefore, organisations remain as value facilitators (Grönroos, 2011).
Literature has questioned what is being "co-created" and identifies the need to reconcile the notion of value with a focus on experiences (Bourgeon-Renault et al. , 2006; Ramaswamy, 2011; Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010b). Recent literature contends that past and anticipated interactions (Helkkula et al. , 2012) and broader social contexts and interactions through which value is derived are key...