This study investigates the role of stakeholder engagement in service ecosystem design through a longitudinal case study of a mobility-as-a-service ecosystem. The study makes three key contributions to the literature on service ecosystem design and stakeholder engagement. First, we conceptualize design-oriented stakeholder engagement (DOSE) as a stakeholder's level of resource investments and expenses in design and non-design processes toward a focal design object. This framework reveals how stakeholders’ varying resource endowments manifest across both design processes (reflexivity and reformation) and non-design processes (reproduction). Second, we identify that stakeholders’ reflexive capabilities manifest in three degrees – focused on self-perceived role, current systemic role, and future systemic role – with those stakeholders who are capable of systemic reflection demonstrating higher voluntary resource investments than those who focused solely on their current roles. Third, we identify role myopia and role uncertainty as barriers that impede higher degrees of reflexivity, explaining differences in stakeholders’ resource investments and engagement levels throughout the design process.

Markets are increasingly perceived as malleable systems constituted by actors that endogenously generate and shape the market. This view extends the traditional market view beyond the buyer-seller dyad and encompasses both directly market-related actors such as companies, suppliers, and buyers but also nonmarket actors such as regulators, lobbyists, journalists, activists, and the wider public. This alternative view has led to the emergence of market-shaping strategies, which refer to a focal company’s deliberate efforts to alter market characteristics, such as price levels or nonmarket elements, such as regulations, in its favor. Most descriptions of market-shaping strategies suggest that they influence both the market and nonmarket environments synergistically, and thus resemble the concept of an integrated strategy. However, given the systemic nature of markets, a company shaping a market may need to combine intended actions aimed at realizing the focal company’s market-shaping vision and emergent actions as response to emerging system dynamics. This implies that a market-shaping strategy may be constituted by different strategies with different but synergistic goals unified by the overarching goal of realizing the focal company’s market-shaping goal. In other words, a market-shaping strategy may be a strategy of strategies – a meta-strategy.  Moreover, previous research has indicated the significant potential of market-shaping strategies to improve the financial performance of companies as well as the overall market performance by increasing market size, market growth and value creation. However, despite this potential, the notion of market-shaping strategies has remained conceptually and empirically underdeveloped.   

This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of market-shaping strategies by analyzing the constituent dimensions of market-shaping strategies and by presenting new empirical insights into how such strategies are employed. Hereby, two papers synthesize extant literature on market-shaping to analyze and conceptualize the underlying process of market-shaping strategies as well as a typology of distinct market-shaping strategies. The other two papers provide new empirical evidence concerning the employment of market-shaping strategies by investigating the influence of market-shaping roles and capabilities on the market-shaping efforts of a focal company.  

Drawing on the findings in the appended papers, this dissertation examines market-shaping strategies from the perspective of a market, nonmarket, integrated, and meta-strategy to reduce the concept’s theoretical and conceptual ambiguity and enhance our conceptual and empirical knowledge of how market-shaping strategies are construed and employed.   

This dissertation proposes market-shaping to be a meta-strategy of different integrated strategies focused on shaping both the market and nonmarket environment, while mitigating system dynamics and pursuing the overarching goal of shaping a market. This meta-strategic perspective provides a more nuanced and structured approach to understanding market-shaping strategies, reducing ambiguity, and emphasizing the interrelations between different environments and strategies. Through this structured approach, the interrelations between the different environments and strategies are emphasized, rendering dynamics and synergies between the two more comprehensible and highlighting the necessity for systemic strategies.  Thereby, this dissertation contributes to the literature on market shaping by providing a more detailed understanding of the nature and dimensions of market-shaping strategies, and how such strategies are employed by companies in practice. Through this effort, several theoretical and managerial implications are proposed as well as policy implications suggested that indicate a potential dark side of market-shaping strategies.    

Marknader uppfattas alltmer som formbara system som består av aktörer som skapar och formar marknaden. Detta synsätt utvidgar det traditionella perspektivet på marknader till att omfatta både direkt marknadsrelaterade aktörer som företag, leverantörer och kunder samt icke-marknadsaktörer som tillsynsmyndigheter, lobbyister, journalister, aktivister och allmänheten. Detta alternativa synsätt har lett till framväxten av forskning om marknadsskapande strategier, som avser ett fokusföretags avsiktliga ansträngningar att förändra marknaders egenskaper, t.ex. prisnivåer, eller regleringar, till sin fördel. De flesta beskrivningar av marknadsformande strategier antyder att de påverkar både marknads- och icke-marknadsmiljön på ett synergistiskt sätt, och liknar därmed begreppet integrerad strategi. Med tanke på marknadernas systemiska karaktär kan ett företag som formar en marknad dock behöva kombinera avsedda åtgärder som syftar till att förverkliga det centrala företagets marknadsformande vision och framväxande åtgärder som svar på framväxande systemdynamik. Detta innebär att en marknadsformande strategi kan bestå av olika strategier med olika men synergistiska mål som förenas av det övergripande målet att förverkliga det centrala företagets marknadsformande mål. Med andra ord kan en marknadsformande strategi vara en strategi av strategier - en metastrategi. Tidigare forskning har dessutom visat att marknadsformande strategier har en betydande potential att förbättra företagens ekonomiska resultat och den totala marknadens resultat genom att öka marknadsstorleken, marknadstillväxten och värdeskapandet. Trots denna potential har begreppet marknadsformande strategier förblivit konceptuellt och empiriskt underutvecklat.  

Denna avhandling syftar till att förbättra vår förståelse av marknadsskapande strategier genom att analysera strategiernas ingående dimensioner samt genom att presentera nya empiriska insikter om hur sådana strategier används. I två artiklar sammanfattas den befintliga litteraturen om marknadsskapande för att analysera och konceptualisera den underliggande processen samt en typologi för olika marknadsskapande strategier. De andra två artiklarna ger nya empiriska belägg för användningen av marknadsskapande strategier genom att undersöka hur roller och förmågor påverkar marknadsskapande hos olika företag.   

Med utgångspunkt i resultaten i de bifogade artiklarna undersöker denna avhandling marknadskapande strategier ur ett marknadsperspektiv, ett icke-marknadsperspektiv, ett integrerat perspektiv och ett metastrategiskt perspektiv för att minska begreppets teoretiska och begreppsmässiga tvetydighet och öka vår begreppsmässiga och empiriska kunskap om hur marknadsskapande strategier konstrueras och används.   

I denna avhandling föreslås att marknadsskapande är en metastrategi med olika integrerade strategier som är inriktade på att forma både marknads- och icke-marknadsmiljön, samtidigt som systemdynamiken mildras och det övergripande målet att forma en marknad eftersträvas. Detta metastrategiska perspektiv ger ett mer nyanserat och strukturerat tillvägagångssätt för att förstå marknadsskapande strategier, minska tvetydigheten och betona sambanden mellan olika kontexter och strategier. Genom detta strukturerade tillvägagångssätt betonas sambanden mellan olika kontexter och strategier, vilket gör dynamiken och synergieffekterna mellan de två mer begripliga och framhäver behovet av systemiska strategier.   Därmed bidrar denna avhandling till litteraturen om marknadsskapande genom att ge en mer detaljerad förståelse för karaktären och dimensionerna av marknadsskapande strategier och hur sådana strategier används av företag i praktiken. Genom detta arbete föreslås flera teoretiska och praktiska implikationer samt politiska implikationer som visar på en potentiell mörk sida av marknadsskapande strategier.  

Despite the promise and necessity of sustainable service ecosystems (SSE) to generate transformative value, many SSEs have failed to emerge or have struggled to survive. By investigating the design process of an SSE and the underlying factors that inhibit collaboration between its actors, this study answers calls to use the concept of actor engagement to further understand the dynamics of designing service ecosystems (Vink et al. 2021), as well as calls to further research sustainable services (Huang et al. 2021; Ostrom et al. 2021) and SSEs (Field et al. 2021). 

The main contribution lays in the expansion of the actor engagement concept by identifying five engagement constraints (i.e., institutional, economic, legal, political, and technological) that influence the level of engagement. In line with the systemic view of actor engagement (Brodie et al. 2019), the identified engagement constraints complement current actor engagement conceptualizations by providing systemic factors that influence the engagement behavior of actors. 

Secondly, we leverage service ecosystem design literature, and we identify two non-design related tensions in SSE design (coopetition, and personal commitment), and three design related tensions (related to the value proposition, business model, and governance of the SSE). Indeed, service ecosystem designers may encounter unexpected problems when sustainability becomes a central feature — our findings provide a first overview of tensions that occur in the design process of an SSE and that inhibit them from emerging and realizing sustainable/transformative outcomes.

Thirdly, we find indications that the interplay between engagement and tensions can be perceived as a recursive process, as an actor’s engagement can result in tensions, which in turn can influence their level of engagement. Thus, we provide further insights into the interdependencies and dynamics in SSE design processes (Patrício et al. 2018; Sangiorgi et al. 2017; Vink et al. 2021) and a theoretical understanding for disengagement processes(Chandler and Lusch 2015; Lehtinen et al. 2019)

To date, market-shaping strategies have been mainly investigated from the lens of a focal market actor. Consequently, most insights have been about the activities and outcomes of the examined market-shaping strategy. However, research has indicated that situations in which multiple market actors have attempted to shape a market can result in the overshaping of a market. When a market is overshaped, it can be detrimental to the firm performance of all market participants. However, research into the notion of overshaping is limited. By employing a historical case study of the video game market in the 1980s, we investigate a market in which many firms attempted to shape the market to their benefit. We examine the effect of overshaping on a market and identify dynamics that resulted in the extreme case of overshaping. We contribute to the market-shaping literature by further cementing the concept of overshaping and prompt firms and policymakers to engage in market-shaping collaboratively. 

This study explores the potential existence of reoccurring patterns in market-shaping processes by employing a qualitative meta-analysis to analyze 79 case studies on market-shaping. Through the evidence-based synthesis of qualitative data, we extract 20 generalized market-shaping activities that inform and form the foundation of a three-phased market-shaping process. This conceptual framework divides the market-shaping process into the phases of infusion, formation and retention. By applying our conceptual framework to the qualitative dataset, we explore the presence of market-shaping phases and provide further insights into the interdependences and dynamics between multiple, simultaneously occurring, market-shaping processes. By providing a structured market-shaping process, we attempt to reduce the overall complexity of the market-shaping phenomenon and facilitate the operationalization of the phenomenon for further market-shaping research. Additionally, our conceptualization provides practitioners with a framework to analyze the market-shaping efforts of other market actors and support the design of their own market-shaping strategies.

We identify four market-shaping strategies and their related activities that enable a focal market actor to work towards specific market outcomes. The conceptual framework provides firms with a tool for choosing specific market-shaping strategies depending on their market-shaping intention (offensive/defensive) and perception of a market's stability (stable/unstable). Accordingly, and in line with market-shaping literature, the four market-shaping strategies enable a firm to widen, reduce, maintain, or disrupt a market. Whereas previous market-strategy conceptualizations emphasized firm-level outcomes, the four identified market-shaping strategies focus on market outcomes and encompass a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of a firm's strategic actions on a market. Thereby, this study offers new perspectives on the implementation of market strategies in the context of markets as complex adaptive systems. By exemplifying the four market-shaping strategies using four industry cases, we illustrate how market-shaping strategies can appear in practice and demonstrate how firms can strategically leverage and steer market processes to their advantage.