Semi-globalization of service value co-creation in context-dependent business: “O-motenashi” culture-style service in the traditional Japanese inns of Kaga-ya

Cross-border deployment of business operations provides an opportunity not only for enlarging the market but also for getting new value-creation knowledge. Rather than pursue a uniform across-the-board strategy, semi-globalization focusing on both similarities and local differences is becoming an important theme for local "hidden champion companies” to operate a sustainable service-oriented business. The service-oriented business in such semi-globalization requires realization and refinement of the service process through engineering and management of the facilities / ICT infrastructures and human resource / staff organization, according to transition of service value and degree of context dependency based on the changes of market trend or customer's sense of values. The purpose of our research is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the innovation insights through the semi-globalization of service-oriented business of the yet not sufficiently studied context-dependent service industries. The semi-globalization of service business is demonstrated on the case study of the traditional Japanese inns of Kaga-ya, which have strongly high-context service business model based on the "o-motenashi", a typical Japanese high-context treatment culture. From the differences of value co-creation process between Kaga-ya Taipei and the flagship inn in Japan through on-site surveys at the both locations including interviews with the executives, we were able to recognize and get comprehensive understanding of the transition of multi-context service values. The insights from the present research lead to a methodology aiming at advancing context-dependent service-oriented industries.