The PPP performance based on the co-creation with customers

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to enlighten the position of the customer as a driver to achieve the public–private partnership’s performance. It demonstrates that the customer exceeds being a target. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a literature review on the value for money, the performance prism in the PPP context, the service quality, the customer experience as well as the co-creation. Findings: The PPP success goes through the end-users’ satisfaction regarding their experience quality. The improvement of the customer experience goes through the co-creation, conceding so to the customer, already a target and the mission of a co-creator. In this manner the performance of the PPP project is strengthened, the customer’s satisfaction increases to attain the PPP success. The co-creation through the customer experience succeeds in fulfilling the performance prism and hence constitutes a key success factor of the PPP. Research limitations/implications: The relationships identified from the literature review which build up our conceptual model need to be empirically tested. Practical implications: It is important that customers, as key stakeholders, appear in the performance measures of the PPP project. This paper can be used as a theoretical base and conceptual framework explaining their integration in such business. Originality/value: Although the performance measures in the PPP consider the customer satisfaction a priority, its achievement remains a hard task and not as conspicuous for the PPP managers. The paper attempts through the co-creation based on the customer experience to conciliate between the PPP’s performance and the customers’ empowerment. Furthermore, the paper defines a new form of PPP: the public–private customer partnership.