Transforming Consumer Well-Being Through Service Ecosystems: The Case of Disruptive Events: An Abstract

Mass protests, demonstrations, and armed conflict which are now known as the “Arab Spring” revolution have swept across countries such as Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. These disruptive events are occurrences which change over time (Giesler and Thompson’s 2016) and uncover rich service encounters within a complex service ecosystem (Blocker and Barrios 2015). To date, transformative service research (TSR) has attended to our understanding of service ecosystems. However, we argue that institutions (i.e., the norms, rules, meanings, symbols, and practices which connected actors share) and how service ecosystems evolve in disruptive events also warrant attention. Through 67 semi-structured interviews, this paper closely examines the role of consumption practices in challenging institutional boundaries during periods of disruptive conflict in Egypt, Libya, and Iraq.