Value cocreation and innovation involving consumers and providers interacting with technology: a digital ethnographic study of online mental health forums

Purpose This paper explores how users and providers cocreate value through interacting with online peer support mental health forum technology and offers insights into service ecosystem innovation.Design/methodology/approach The authors employed digital ethnography and interviews and analysed data to identify themes about user practices, provider adaptations and cocreated value outcomes.Findings The study shows how users engage with technology affordances to develop a community that supports their engagement in value cocreation and helps them access support. In turn, providers engage with user data generated through forum use and other sources to influence changes to forum institutions. By analysing a dataset of user interviews, value outcomes realised for forum users are identified. Using a diagram to illustrate how users and providers interact with technology to generate an evolving service ecosystem, the study also offers insights about a service ecosystem perspective of innovation.Research limitations/implications The research shows the value of using mixed datasets to access granular, multi-actor data. Direct feedback loops between user practices and changes to institutions are implied rather than directly observable.Practical implications The authors provide a worked example highlighting how consumers and providers interacting with forum technology supports value cocreation that contributes to problem-solving for consumers and service ecosystem innovation, and fills healthcare ecosystem gaps.Originality/value The study provides novel empirical evidence about multi-actor interactions with technology in value cocreation and informs theory about a service ecosystem perspective of innovation by illustrating technological and market innovation. It extends knowledge about healthcare value cocreation in mental health.