A Consideration of Value Co-Creation in Branding of University Research-Laboratories

Since service dominant logic and co-creation have been applied to branding in the higher education sector as bottom-up building of brand, research laboratories have become an essential factor in university branding. This paper aims to explore branding of research laboratories based on value co-creation processes through real experiences in research laboratories. The authors' hypotheses have identified how research laboratory brand could be created and sustainably expanded based on co-creation between professors and students. Case studies in Japanese laboratories were assumed to have their operations based on service dominant logic to verify the hypotheses. In addition, the concept of trust as value-in-trust was evaluated through this research to identify ways in which research laboratory brands were directly and indirectly spread by co-creation. Thus, this research emphasized the concept that the core of stable and powerful brands was contributed by value co-creation of stakeholders who maintained their mutual trust.