Resumo

In an increasingly dynamic and competitive business environment, innovation has become a fundamental factor as a source of sustainable competitive advantage for organizations . The literature also highlights the importance of innovation as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Among the strategies employed by organizations, customer engagement management, and customer co-creation have assumed significant prominence (Kumar & Pansari, 2016; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).

While there are relevant studies on innovation, value co-creation, and customer engagement in the context of hospitality and tourism, there is a gap in the literature regarding their applicability in traditional restaurants, especially when analyzing restaurants from a managerial perspective. Given this context, the objective of this study was to explore the management of customer co-creation and customer engagement as sources of sustainable competitive advantage in traditional restaurants.

Traditional restaurants aim to preserve authenticity and cultural heritage by maintaining recipes and practices that have stood the test of time (Lee et al., 2022). While customer co-creation involves interaction processes between companies and customers for value creation and extraction (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004), customer engagement is an approach that creates, builds, and enhances a customer's cognitive, physical, and emotional presence in a company (Kumar & Pansari, 2016).

This is a primary, cross-sectional, exploratory, and qualitative study. The following steps were followed in its construction: semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 traditional restaurants, with an average age of 59.7. The data were transcribed and categorized using Nvivo. The analysis followed the Thematic Analysis methodology. The written report presents and analyzes the data across three themes: expansion of innovation capacity, reinforcement of identity, and creation of affective memory. Finally, a co-creation design framework proposal for traditional restaurants was suggested.

Based on the analysis of 15 establishments, it was observed that a creative and close relationship with customers enhances the business's innovation capacity, in addition to being a fundamental strategic component for identity reinforcement and the creation of affective memory. Building on the best practices from the investigated sample, a design framework for customer co-creation in traditional restaurants was proposed, following the proposition of Frow et al. (2015), which allows for a deep reflection on creative ways to extract maximum value from multiple customer relationships.

This study aimed to explore the management of customer engagement and value co-creation as a source of sustainable competitive advantage in traditional restaurants. It has provided a strategic approach to the design of co-creation in traditional restaurants, offering companies greater opportunities for innovation with their customer network. Considering that collaborative innovation plays an increasingly important role in organizational success, the systematic adoption of co-creation strategies provides greater potential for value extraction and long-term survival.

Frow, P., Nenonen, S., Payne, A., & Storbacka, K. (2015). Managing co‐creation design: A strategic approach to innovation. British Journal of Management, 26(3). Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18(3). Kumar, V., & Pansari, A. (2016). Competitive advantage through engagement. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(4). Lee, C., Pung, J. M., & Del Chiappa, G. (2022). Exploring the nexus of tradition, modernity, and innovation in restaurant SMEs. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 100.