Co-Production of Prolonged, Complex, and Negative Services : An Examination of Medication Adherence in Chronically Ill Individuals

This study examines customer co-production in a prolonged, complex, and negative service context — medication adherence in chronically ill individuals. We integrate services and medical perspectives to develop a novel theoretical framework of adherence as a nested system of co-production behaviors, characterized by temporal and scope dimensions. Utilizing a qualitative approach, our findings point to two key insights about co-production in the customer sphere. First, the enactment and form of regular-restricted, intermittent-intermediate, and irregular-expansive co-production behaviors are determined by the characteristics of the customer sphere — that is, co-production is contextualized. Second, the co-production system in the customer sphere is complex and the different levels are interdependent. Our research contributes to the emerging literature on service co-production by elucidating the behaviors through which customers strive towards adherence. The identified co-production framework holds important implications for providers of prolonged and complex services and future research directions