Yindyamarra: Value co-creation with aboriginal Australians

Bringing together individuals of diverse perspectives in a research team can be challenging, especially when one perspective has been largely unacknowledged. ‘Value co-creation’ is used in marketing to include the voice of the consumer in the development of offerings to create value for both the organisation and the consumer. This study firstly examines how well Bharti et al’s. (2015: 575-576) value co-creation model captures a process of research collaboration that privileges the voice of a marginalised group, and whether it can do this by conducting research in a culturally sensitive and safe way. In order to understand how value co-creation privileges the voice of marginalised groups, we examine a project that brought together three different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, groups of people: Aboriginal community members; health care practitioners and/or policymakers and marketing experts. It is revealed that the Bharti et al. (2015) model exemplifies many of the elements needed to weave together different methodological perspectives and manage the dynamics of a research team. However, some adaptations were required, particularly: the inclusion of a ‘cultural broker’; a means of ‘cultural governance’; and the addition of a sixth pillar to the model – ‘evaluation’.