Värdeskapande gästfrihet : Hur gästfrihet som värde ramas in, etableras och förhandlas i hotellbranschen

Sammanfattning: Research in service management and marketing has in the past decade highlighted the concept of value creation. In service organizations value creation is described as a process in which the customer uses a company's value proposition in a meaningful way. However, research has tended to ignore the contextual meaning, and few empirical studies have shown how context is relevant. Therefore, the aim of this thesis to is to describe, problematize and analyze how hospitality as value is created, established and negotiated in the hotel industry. Three methods were employed in the collection of empirical material in this study. Ethnographic observations were performed at a mid-sized city hotel in southern Sweden. Qualitative interviews with hotel personnel in the Swedish hotel industry were conducted, and marketing materials such as brochures and post-cards, were collected. A holistic, interdisciplinary framework was used in the study, consisting of theories formulated by, among others, service researchers as Christian Grönroos and Richard Normann, and symbolic interactionists as Erving Goffman, Randal Collins, Arnold van Gennep, Johan Asplund and Michèle Lamont and Molnár Virág. The empirical findings shows that value is created, established and negotiated when interpersonal strategies and tactics, organizational procedures such as the check-in, and service strategies, are interwoven with social and cultural values that frame services, equipment and facilities as attractive. The conclusions suggest that creation of value is a complex phenomenon, consisting of processes that are rarely highlighted in service management and marketing. In order to highlight the interwoven, procedural character of these constellations, the concept of value transition is introduced. The concept of value transition encompasses the relevant phenomenon, and thus has an ontological focus that enables analytical sharpness. The results show that the theoretical foundations of how value is to be broadened in order to highlight the multiple, disparate processes and especially highlighting how they interact in different situations.