Paper Title
Creating Competitive Advantage through Implementation of Engagement Platforms in Value Co-Creation Process

Abstract
Introduction: With an increased competition in every business sector, the term ‘co-creation’ plays an important role for higher growth in business with the involvement of customers. This could be achieved by one of the mode that is ‘value co-creation’. Co-creation provides forum for customers and firms to share combine and renew each other’s resources and capabilities to create value through new forms of interaction. Literature Review and Research Gaps: The theoretical concept considered for this research is Building blocks of value co-creation: DART model (Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy 2004), Modern marketing theories (Vargo and Lush, 2006), Co-creation benefits (Fuller, 2010). Accumulating customer retention is one of the means of building competitive advantage which could be attained through co-creation process. This process has been implemented by very few counted companies where the studies on service sector industries is sparse in theoretical and practical development. Research Method: The proposed conceptual model demonstrates and proposes an empirical setting to investigate the theoretical relational path drawn from the literature to test through hypothesis. The approach of this investigation is exploratory, descriptive which incorporates quantitative data where empirical findings show the level of significance of the relationship. Finding and Conclusion: This research is hence an effort to add a little in the sparse knowledge base and an effort to shed light on engagement marketing topic “value co-creation. The variable is effective engagement platforms which imparts positive and significant effect in value co-creation process. Theoretical and practitioner implications: Incorporating this variable would help in involving customers as well also help in satisfying and retaining customers. Managers could focus on acquainting the level of co-creation, because it encourages various advantages for the industry to increase their business opportunities through innovation, creativity and new insights through customers. Limitations: As this research is confined to analyses and investigations of antecedent’s of value co-creation model, the review of literature suggests that there is wide range of issues that might have some impact on co-creation. But to keep the study in manageable proportions for analysis and maintain meanness, only four theoretically driven rational variable have been included in this study as predictors of value co-creation. Keywords - Value Co-creation, Competitive Advantage, offline Platforms, Online Platforms.