Actor experience: Bridging individual and collective-level theorizing

Many marketing phenomena involve a group ’ s collective experiences; however, marketing research largely fo- cuses on an individual ’ s experiences. This research argues that individual-level theorizing alone is inadequate to capture collective experiences, such as how families, teams


Introduction
Traditional theorizations of experience in the marketing literature have mainly focused on how individuals experience and make sense of goods and/or services (e.g., Becker & Jaakkola, 2020;Helkkula et al., 2012). However, we often attribute experiences to groups or collectives in everyday life. For instance, we might say that our university faculty is excited and proud about winning an accreditation or that business partners experience mutual joy, excitement, or satisfaction about achieving a contract after long negotiations.
These examples show that theorizations of individual experience are insufficient to address certain phenomena, such as how groups of consumers experience a customer journey (e.g., Hamilton et al., 2021) or how firm representatives experience service provision (e.g., Witell et al., 2020). In other words, the individual-focused conceptualizations of experience in marketing research leave out a prevalent phenomenon: collective experiences. This is problematic because (1) a substantial part of business reality revolves around collectives, and (2) assumptions or understandings of individual-level phenomena do not necessarily apply or transcend to collective-level phenomena (Hamilton et al., 2021;Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019;Witell et al., 2020). Therefore, the marketing literature needs a broader conceptualization of experience that addresses both individual and collective phenomena. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to conceptualize actor experience.
The emerging metatheory of service-dominant (S-D) logic offers tools for this conceptualization. S-D logic describes how actors cocreate value in service ecosystems (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2016 through "holistic, meaning-laden experiences" (Vargo and Lusch, 2016, p. 7), viewing value as "uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary" (Vargo & Lusch, 2016, p. 8). S-D logic thus incorporates a phenomenological perspective suitable for the conceptualization of experience (Helkkula et al., 2012). Furthermore, its generic actor orientation overcomes predefined roles such as producers, consumers, or customers to acknowledge that all actors integrate resources to actualize desired benefits (Vargo & Lusch, 2011, 2016. Adopting the generic actor orientation thus contributes to a transcending conceptualization of actor experience that can be applied to both individual and collective actors (Vargo and Lusch, 2017;Vargo & Lusch, 2011).
Phenomenology complements S-D logic in building the conceptualization of actor experience. While S-D logic has addressed phenomenological experiences, this consideration largely presents in relation to value rather than in view of experiences per se (e.g., Vargo & Lusch, 2008). For this reason, we delve deeper into the phenomenology literature to better understand how actor experience emerges, given phenomenology's inherent focus on experience and its capacity to theorize individual and collective levels of experience. Hence, in this article, S-D logic metatheory and phenomenology present the theoretical building blocks that inform a mid-range conceptualization of actor experience that can be applied to marketing phenomena.
To illustrate the application of our conceptualization, we further demonstrate how it informs a central marketing phenomenon: value determination. Value is a central concept in marketing literature (Zeithaml et al., 2020), therefore, the question of "how" and "who" determines value becomes a relevant concern in this field (Campbell-Johnston et al., 2020;Gummerus, 2013). Considering that value can be phenomenologically conceived (Vargo & Lusch, 2008), understanding value determination thus requires the understanding of experiences.
This article makes several contributions to the literature. The transcending S-D logic-and phenomenology-informed conceptualization of actor experience offers the basis for the theorization of collective phenomena in marketing research, such as collective trust (e.g., Kramer et al., 1996), collective engagement (e.g., Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019), and collective customer experience (e.g., Witell et al., 2020), that are of interest in B2B research especially. By demonstrating how the conceptualization of actor experience applies to value determination, this article also contributes to S-D logic in three ways. First, we show how value experience emerges for both individual and collective actors by integrating the generic actor orientation with the phenomenological perspective of experience. Second, we differentiate between two types of value determination: value experience, in which beneficiaries determine value for themselves (individually or collectively), and value attribution, in which actors attribute value to other individual or collective actors. Third, we further elucidate how social interaction and institutional factors influence value determination.
This article is structured as follows. In Section 2, we build our conceptualization of actor experience based on S-D logic and a phenomenological view of experience. In Section 3, we demonstrate how actor experience can inform S-D logic by delineating two forms of value determination-value experience and value attribution-and specifying how social interaction and institutional factors influence them. Section 4 concludes with theoretical, practical, and research implications.

Conceptualizing actor experience
In this section, we first present the theoretical building blocks for our conceptualization of actor experience (Table 1) through the development of premises, "statements identifying and defining concepts as the core elements of a theoretical perspective" (Ulaga et al., 2021, p. 398). To develop our conceptualization, first, we rely on the generic actor orientation in S-D logic to argue that both individual and collective actors can be beneficiaries-actors who experience value. Second, we rely on phenomenology to describe how individual and collective experiences emerge, and phenomenology and the institutional view in S-D logic to describe how social interaction and institutional factors influence experiences. We end the section with a transcending definition of actor experience. Table 1 presents the key concepts that help conceptualize actor experience.

Individual and collective actors as beneficiaries
The generic actor orientation from S-D logic is our first building block, because our purpose is to conceptualize actor experience in a way that can be applied to both individual and collective actors. S-D logic sees all actors engaging in service exchange as pursuing the same  (1986); Chelstrom (2012) purpose-value cocreation-and being involved in the same activities of resource integration and service provision (Akaka et al., 2021;Vargo & Lusch, 2011). Vargo and Lusch (2011) state that insights on experiences should be applicable not only to consumers but also to other actors (e.g., producers), which include collective actors, such as businesses, households, and even countries Vargo & Lusch, 2011, 2016. The generic actor orientation thus includes both individual human actors (e.g., an individual consumer) and collective actors formed by a set of individuals (e.g., a firm, a nation). S-D logic defines a generic actor as "[a]n entity capable of acting on potential resources to cocreate value, either positively or negatively valenced" (Vargo & Lusch, 2019, p. 740). We draw on this definition to offer the first premise for our conceptualization of actor experience: Premise 1a: Individual actor refers to any individual "capable of acting on potential resources to cocreate value" (based on Vargo & Lusch, 2019, p. 740).
Premise 1b: Collective actor refers to a set of individuals-such as families, teams, firms, or networks-who, as a collective, are "capable of acting on potential resources to cocreate value" (based on Vargo & Lusch, 2019, p. 740).
S-D logic defines a beneficiary as "a focal actor that is experiencing value (positive or negative) in a particular context" (Akaka et al., 2021, p. 381). In early conceptualizations of S-D logic, the beneficiary was often conceptualized as the individual consumer (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), largely aligned with individual conceptualizations of experience in the marketing literature. However, S-D logic has been moving toward a perspective in which generic actors, including individual and collective actors, can experience and determine value (e.g., Vargo & Lusch, 2011). The generic actor orientation thus suggests that the conceptualization of actor experience should be applicable to both individual and collective actors.

The phenomenological view of experience
S-D logic states that "value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary," describing value as "idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual, and meaning-laden" (Vargo & Lusch, 2008, p. 7, emphases added). This emphasizes the central role of actors' experiences as the phenomenological basis for value determination.
Given the central role of experience in value determination, researchers have sought to characterize phenomenological experiences within the S-D logic narrative, stressing that experience is individual and subjective, context specific, and cocreated by multiple actors (e.g., Helkkula et al., 2012;Jaakkola et al., 2015). Consequently, one needs to understand the actor's phenomenological frame of reference and unique (social) context to understand phenomenological experiences (Helkkula & Kelleher, 2010).
However, S-D logic characterizes experience largely in relation to value. In this way, S-D logic does not define experience or deeply consider how experience emerges according to a phenomenological perspective beyond focusing on an actor's subjectivity and unique (institutional) context. Furthermore, even though the S-D logic narrative should be equally applicable to all generic actors, current S-D logic characterization of experience focuses mostly on an individual human actor, especially customers or consumers, as the beneficiary (e.g., Helkkula et al., 2012). To overcome these gaps, we elaborate on the phenomenological perspective of experience to theorize how individual and collective experiences emerge, both of which are part of actor experience.

Individual experience
The core of phenomenology revolves around how an individual experiences a phenomenon, makes sense of it, and attaches meaning to it (Smith, 2003). In phenomenology, experience refers to "the consciousness of an … object" (Husserl, 1982), "the contents of consciousness" (Velmans, 2009, p. 4), or even a synonymous of phenomenal consciousness (Block, 1995). The content of consciousness refers to all phenomena an actor is conscious of (Velmans, 2009), encompassing different passive and active modes of experiencing, such as bodily or tactile sensations, "perception, imagination, thought, emotion, desire, volition, and action" (Smith, 2003), whether individuals are aware of the experience or not (Naccache, 2018). Giving its meaning, experience is not seen as an antecedent of other concepts, but any phenomenon that relies on consciousness (e.g., trust, customer experience, engagement) can be seen as a phenomenological experience.
Experiences become possible through consciousness' ability "to be of or about things-how consciousness can direct itself toward objects internal (images, memories, etc.) and external (things, relations, and events in the world)" (Krueger, 2018, p. 2). That is, "conscious mental states are never empty" but revolve around a reference object (the what, presented to or appearing before consciousness) and an act or process of experiencing this object (the how, such as by remembering, imagining, sensing, etc.) (Krueger et al., 2018, p. 2). The reference object is called noema, whereas the process of experiencing is called noesis (Moustakas, 1994;Smith, 2003). Both elements in combination converge into a noetic structure that is unique to the individual experiencing the world in that very context. Experiences are always unfolding based on this noetic structure, which is encapsulated by the phenomenological term intentionality. Here, intentionality "refers to the way consciousness can stretch out or be directed toward objects" and builds the foundation for the subjectivity of lived experiences (Krueger, 2018, p. 2).
Phenomenological experiences are not only individual but also social (Helkkula et al., 2012), given the influence of other actors at the time of the experience and/or the time of processing of the experience. S-D logic reflects this in the concept of value-in-context, which acknowledges that value experiences are phenomenologically framed by the context , and in the institutional theorizing, whereby socially constructed norms and conventions regulate human action (Edvardsson et al., 2014;Vargo & Lusch, 2016) and influence experience . The social context thus encompasses not only other social actors but also institutions and institutional arrangements that frame phenomenological experiences. Therefore, the phenomenological perspective (Krueger et al., 2018;Smith, 2003) offers the following premise for conceptualizing actor experience: Premise 2: Individual experience refers to an individual actor's enactment of consciousness-in the form of bodily or tactile sensations, perceptions, thoughts, imagination, desires, emotions, volition, or actions-directed at a reference object in a social context. Fig. 1 illustrates this phenomenological understanding of individual actors' experiences by way of their noetic structure along with the social context.
Nevertheless, phenomenology literature acknowledges that individuals frequently project experiences onto others (Burns, 2018;Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012), and this formed the basis for the argument that collective experiences exist. Following this idea, Carr (1986) advocated for a specific case of phenomenological experiences in which the reference subject of the experience is not "I" (i.e., individual experience) or "other" or "them", but a case in which individuals attribute experiences to a collective actor-such as firms, households, and nations-in which they are included: "we". In this case, intentionality-the directedness of consciousness toward an object (Krueger et al., 2018;Smith, 2003)refers back to a collective actor as the experiencing subject. Collective intentionality can be understood in this sense as "the directedness of consciousness in the first-person plural form" (Chelstrom, 2012) (intentionality as "we" in Fig. 2). This attribution of intentionality to collective actors allows a conceptualization of collective experiences that is based on individual consciousness.
According to this understanding, individual actors project their intentionality onto a set of individual actors who form the collective actor, although this collective actor does not have its own intentionality (Burns, 2015(Burns, , 2016(Burns, , 2018Chelstrom, 2012;Mathiesen, 2005). The noesis, "the act of perceiving, feeling, thinking, remembering, or judging" (Moustakas, 1994, p. 2; see also Krueger et al., 2018;Smith, 2003), refers back to a plural subject, the collective in the individual actor's consciousness (i.e., we perceive, we feel, we think, and so on) (Stein, 1922(Stein, /2000. The individual experiences something together with other individuals who form a collective actor in a way that the experience cannot adequately be described in the first-person singular (i.e., "we intend x" instead of "I intend x") (Burns, 2016;Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012;Mathiesen, 2005;Stein, 1922Stein, /2000. This togetherness is important because it excludes experiences happening at the same time that do not refer back to a plural subject from the conceptualization of collective experiences (Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012). In other words, cases where two people have the same experience that refer back to a first-person singular (i.e., "I intend x") cannot be characterized as collective experiences (Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012).
Furthermore, the set of individual actors who form a collective actor can vary with respect to their determinateness (e.g., from imaginary friends to specific members of a firm) (Chelstrom, 2012). Determinate plural subjects include specific people or groups of people (e.g., the three members of a small department), while indeterminate plural subjects include unspecified subjects (e.g., all employees of a firm, even if the individual actor does not know who or how many they are) (Chelstrom, 2012). Therefore, from a phenomenological perspective, the individuals enacting a collective experience determine the set of individuals who form the collective actor (Chelstrom, 2012).
Enacting an experience in the "we" form, however, is only the first condition for conceptualizing a collective experience. The second condition is that the focal individual actor also needs to perceive or believe that the respective collective experience is or should be shared among the set of individuals who form the collective actor (Burns, 2015(Burns, , 2016(Burns, , 2018Carr, 1986;Mathiesen, 2005). We define the sharedness of collective experience as the degree to which individuals have the same or a similar collective experience, ranging from low (individuals having very different experiences) to high (individuals having very similar or same experiences). Note that this perceived sharedness of experience is due to a projection onto the other individuals who form the collective actor. In other words, the perception of sharedness is a condition for the collective experience, not the actual sharedness of the collective experience. In fact, it is very unlikely that all individuals who form the collective actor actually share the same experience (Chelstrom, 2012). The collective experience is socially negotiated and revised as someone receives more input from other individuals who form the collective actor (Burns, 2016;Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012). These insights can be condensed into the following premise: Premise 3: Collective experience refers to an individual actor's enactment of consciousness directed at a reference object in a social context in a way that the individual actor perceives the experience as shared among a collective actor.
Note that, from an S-D logic perspective, the collective actor is the beneficiary in an individual actor's consciousness; however, the collective actor per se cannot experience; an individual actor experiences value in reference to the collective actor. Fig. 2 illustrates how the collective experience manifests in an individual actor's consciousness.
While the perception of sharedness is the relevant factor for the characterization of collective experience, the literature shows that social interaction and institutional factors can influence the degree of sharedness of the collective experience. Social interaction factors such as empathy, solidarity among the set of individuals who are part of the collective actor, social and emotional contagion, interpersonal entrainment, joint attention, perception-action matching, and mimicry can influence the degree to which the collective experience converges and  becomes similar among the individuals who form a collective actor (2018; Burns, 2015;Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019;Pacherie, 2017;Thornton et al., 2012). S-D logic recognizes this bottom-up, synchronizing effect derived from social interactions (Edvardsson et al., 2011;Meynhardt et al., 2016). These factors facilitate an openness to and understanding of the other's experience, thus contributing to the alignment of actions and the sharing of states , and allowing individuals to predict and better understand other individuals' experiences (Pacherie, 2017). For instance, if individuals who are part of a collective actor show empathy and solidarity toward one another, they allow each other's concerns to become their own (Burns, 2018).
Actors rely on institutional arrangements as sensemaking frames, reference, or guides to assess social situations, resources, service, and value (Greenwood et al., 2011;. Individuals within a collective actor who share institutional arrangements tend to use similar sensemaking frames (Koskela-Huotari , thus increasing the likelihood that they will have shared collective experiences. However, different institutional arrangements can intersect and overlap in any service ecosystem Vargo et al., 2015), and institutions at a macro level (e.g., national values) influence institutions at meso (e.g., industry norms) and micro levels (e.g., a company culture) . It is possible, hence, that distinct institutional arrangements guide individual actors within a collective actor, thus offering conflicting guides for how to interpret experiences (e.g., Greenwood et al., 2010;Siltaloppi et al., 2016;Vargo et al., 2015). In a scenario where individuals within the collective actor are guided by different institutional arrangements, the collective experiences might be less shared.
Social interaction and institutional factors do not independently influence the sharedness of collective experiences. Rather, they recursively influence each other (Meynhardt et al., 2016;Thornton et al., 2012;Vargo & Lusch, 2016). Institutional arrangements not only provide sensemaking frames for experiencing and action, but they also coordinate interactions between actors (e.g., Thornton et al., 2012;Vargo & Lusch, 2016). Reproductions of social interactions, in turn, can lead to changes in institutional arrangements over time (Edvardsson et al., 2011;Meynhardt et al., 2016;Thornton et al., 2012). Therefore, we note that social interaction and institutional factors are not totally independent factors that influence the sharedness of collective experiences. Fig. 3 shows that a collective experience can vary in the degree of sharedness among the collective actor even though the focal actor believes that the experience is shared. It also shows that social interaction and institutional factors can influence the sharedness of collective experiences. Fig. 3. Basic constellations of collective experience.

Transcending definition for actor experience
Based on the building blocks for conceptualizing actor experience presented in the previous sections (Table 1), we are now able to provide a transcending definition of actor experience that encompasses both individual and collective experiences. These building blocks are, on the one hand, the generic actor orientation in S-D logic (e.g., Vargo & Lusch, 2011) arguing that both individual and collective actors can be beneficiaries (premise 1), and, on the other hand, the understanding, rooted in phenomenology (e.g., Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012;Smith, 2003), of how individual and collective experiences emerge based on individuals' consciousness (premises 2 and 3). Together, these theoretical perspectives allow a transcending concept of actor experience as presented in premise 4: Premise 4: Actor experience refers to an individual actor's enactment of consciousness-in the form of bodily or tactile sensations, perception, thoughts, imagination, desires, emotions, volition, or actions-directed at a reference object in a social context. Actor experience can be individual or collective based on the degree to which the experience is perceived as shared among a collective actor.

Actor experience and value determination
In this section, we illustrate the application of our conceptualization of actor experience by describing how it informs the understanding of a central and relevant marketing phenomenon: value determination (see Gummerus, 2013;Vargo & Lusch, 2004). In Section 3.1, we present two forms of value determination-value experience and value attribution--through premises that define these concepts. In Section 3.2, we present how social interaction and institutional factors affect these two forms of value determination through the development of research propositions, "statements specifying relationships between concepts" (Ulaga et al., 2021, p. 399).

How generic actors experience and attribute value
Value is a central concept in marketing literature that has been defined in several ways (Gummerus, 2013;Zeithaml et al., 2020). In this article, we adopt S-D logic's view in which value is defined as an "emergent, positively or negatively valenced change in the well-being or viability of a particular system/actor" (Akaka et al., 2021, p. 381;Vargo & Lusch, 2019, p. 740). S-D logic also presents value-in-use, which refers to "the perceived increase in benefit in relation to a focal actor, resulting from … service provision" (Akaka et al., 2021, p. 381), and value-incontext, which explicitly recognizes "that value is always a partial function of context" (Akaka et al., 2021, p. 381).
S-D logic states that value is always determined by the beneficiary, i. e. the actor experiencing value (e.g., Vargo & Lusch, 2008, 2016. However, value can also be determined from the viewpoint of or in relation to a focal actor who is the beneficiary (Akaka et al., , 2021. In other words, these descriptions suggest that value does need to be necessarily determined by the beneficiaries themselves, but another actor can potentially project value onto them. Value can thus either unfold through a beneficiary's first-hand experience (one's own 'viewpoint of'), or through the perspective of another actor attributing value to focal actor (projecting 'in relation to'). Building on this S-D logic perspective (e.g., Akaka et al., 2021), we refer to value determination as the process of experiencing and/or attributing value.
Consequently, our conceptualization of actor experience highlights two forms of value determination: one in which actors experience value themselves as beneficiaries, individually or collectively, and another in which actors attribute value to other individual or collective focal actors as the beneficiaries. We then propose a distinction between these two forms of value determination, labelling them value experience (Helkkula et al., 2012) and value attribution (Hilton, 2017;Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2018), respectively. This distinction is important because only value experience is determined by the beneficiary; value attribution is determined by another actor in relation to a focal actor who is the beneficiary. Our conceptualization of how individual and collective experiences emerge gives insights into value experience, while the previous discussion on attributing experiences to other actors gives insights into value attribution.
Value experience can be defined as an actor's first-hand experienced change in the well-being or viability of a system/actor (based on Vargo & Lusch, 2019;Akaka et al., 2021). In other words, the beneficiaries determine value for themselves by experiencing a change in their wellbeing or viability first-hand. In S-D logic terms, an individual actor can phenomenologically determine value by sensing, feeling, remembering, evaluating, or imagining (noesis; the experiencing) a change in their well-being or viability (noema, the reference object) (Akaka et al., 2021). Value experience, then, is a form of actor experience in which the reference object is value. For example, a consumer can feel (noema) a change in their pleasure level (noesis) as result of an interaction with a frontline employee. The felt change in the pleasure level represents a change in this individual actor's well-being, i.e., the consumer experiences value. Therefore, we propose: Premise 5: Value experience refers to an individual actor's first-hand experienced value.
Since generic actors, including individual and collective actors (Vargo & Lusch, 2011), are beneficiaries in S-D logic, we propose that value experience can be individual or collective depending on the beneficiary ("I" or "we") in an individual actor's consciousness. Individual actors experience value when they experience a change in their own individual well-being or viability. In other words, the singular firstperson, I, is the reference subject of the phenomenological value experience. Collective actors, however, do not have consciousness, so they cannot experience value themselves (e.g., a firm cannot experience a change in its viability). Nevertheless, our conceptualization of collective experience shows that individual actors can have collective experiences and, thus, collective value experiences as well. We propose that collective value experience manifests in individual consciousness in a "weform" with the belief that it is shared. For example, an employee who is part of a department (i.e., collective actor) can have a collective value experience when they experience value in the name of the other members of the department, believing that they all share a similar experience. That is, the plural first-person, we, is the beneficiary (i.e., reference subject) of the phenomenological value experience. Therefore, we propose: Premise 6: Individual actors can experience value in the form of individual or collective value based on the degree to which the value is perceived as shared among a collective actor.
A visual depiction of how our conceptualization of actor experience applies to value experience as a form of value determination is shown in Fig. 4.
Value attribution can be defined as an individual actor's projection of value experiences onto another individual or collective actor. It happens when an individual actor determines value for a beneficiary, such that the individual actor projects value onto the beneficiary in a particular context (Akaka et al., 2021). In this case, the individual actor attributing the experience to other(s) does not perceive themselves as part of the beneficiary (differently from the collective experience) but can observe, ascribe, and attribute value to other individual and collective actors (Carr, 1986). In other words, the "other"-be individual or collective actor-is treated as the beneficiary to whom one attributes value in one's consciousness (Chelstrom, 2012). This form of value determination is different from value experience in which the beneficiary is either "I" (individual value experience) or "we" (collective value experience).
This kind of value attribution is common in everyday life (Burns, 2016;Carr, 1986). For instance, a salesperson can attribute satisfaction and better performance (i.e., a change in well-being and viability) to their business customer (i.e., the beneficiary) due to their service provision. Such value attributions are important within resource integration and service-for-service exchanges because they encompass expectations regarding the value experiences of other resource integrators that are assumed to guide these exchange partners' behaviors. These expectations, in turn, reflect back on a resource-integrating actor's own behavior, so they also influence the value that is cocreated for this specific actor (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2018). Nevertheless, the individual actor who is attributing an experience can never fully encompass the other's experience (Chelstrom, 2012). Therefore, we propose: Premise 7: Value attribution refers to an individual actor's projection of value onto other individual and collective actors.
Altogether, these premises advance the understanding of generic actors' individual and collective value determination for themselves (value experience) and for others (value attribution). Note that we are not asserting that value experience and value attribution are new types of value (e.g., value, value-in-use, and value-in-context); rather, they represent two forms of value determination. Next, we describe some conditions of these types of value determination; more specifically, how social interaction and institutional factors influence value experience and value attribution.

Conditions of value determination
Our conceptualization of actor experience suggests that the degree to which individuals have the same or a similar collective value experience may vary between low and high (see Fig. 3). Based on this conceptualization, we now present propositions (Ulaga et al., 2021) that specify relationships between conditions of value determination (i.e., social interaction and institutional factors), the sharedness of collective experiences, and the accuracy of value attributions.
Social interaction factors such as empathy, solidarity, and emotional contagion can influence the degree to which value experiences converge and become similar among the set of individuals who are part of a collective actor (e.g., Burns, 2015Burns, , 2018Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019;Pacherie, 2017;Thornton et al., 2012), as stated in Section 2.2.2. For example, suppose an academic department received an accreditation. The members of the department can increase the sharedness of the value experience of pride through these social interaction factors. Other members might start experiencing the same thing through emotional contagion when they post on social media about this achievement and how proud they are. In the same vein, suppose that some users of a machinery in a unit are unhappy with the product (i.e., negative value). They can make their value experiences open to one another when they start complaining to one another, thus contributing to higher sharedness of these negative experiences (cf. Holt, 1995). Therefore, we propose: Proposition 1: Social interaction factors (e.g., social contagion, empathy, joint attention) within the collective actor influence the sharedness of collective value experiences.
We argue that these social interaction factors can also influence value attribution. Our conceptualization of actor experience suggests that value attribution can vary in degrees of accuracy (i.e., how congruent the value attribution is with the focal actor's experience) considering that one can never fully grasp another actor's experience (Chelstrom, 2012). In other words, when individual actors attribute value to other actors, they are likely to have incorrect, inaccurate, or biased assessments. For instance, salespeople can "hit the spot" or completely misjudge the value that their customers are experiencing when making value attributions.
Value attribution is also a projection; therefore, a better understanding of another actor's experience likely results in more accurate value attributions (i.e., one can attribute value as it is actually experienced by the other actor). The more these social interaction factors operate between the actors, the more accurate the value attribution will tend to be, because these processes facilitate access to the other's experiences (Burns, 2015(Burns, , 2018. For instance, suppose that a salesperson and a business customer achieve a high level of empathy in their interactions. Empathy might create a higher degree of openness among the salesperson and the business customer's members, and the salesperson can also more easily imagine being "in these members' shoes." Therefore, the salesperson will likely be more accurate when attributing value to the business customer who is the beneficiary. We propose: Proposition 2: Social interaction factors (e.g., social contagion, empathy, joint attention) between the actor attributing value and the beneficiary influence the accuracy of value attributions. Furthermore, institutional factors can also influence the sharedness of collective value experiences, as previously suggested. Considering that institutional arrangements offer individuals sensemaking frames for interpreting value , it follows that the degree of institutional complexity within a collective actor can influence the degree of sharedness of collective experiences. Institutional complexity refers to "the multiplicity of institutional arrangements confronting actors with conflicting prescriptions for action" (Siltaloppi et al., 2016, p. 333). When it comes to collective value experiences, institutional complexity manifests in providing conflicting views of value within the collective actor Vargo et al., 2015). Therefore, when there is low institutional complexity in a collective actor, individuals within the collective will likely have highly shared collective experiences.
For example, the way football spectators are "controlled" when watching a game in a stadium varies significantly across countries. Audiences in England typically sit right at the edge of the football pitch without any fences between the spectators and players. Strong institutional norms guide what is considered right or wrong fan behavior, and violation of those norms is strongly frowned upon and prosecuted. German stadiums, however, typically separate fans from the players by way of metal fences or architectural barriers, promoting regulative rather than normative institutions. The more a fan group shares institutional understandings in a specific context, the more likely their experiences emerge in similar ways.
Conversely, in a scenario with high institutional complexity within the collective actor, individuals will likely have different sensemaking frames for value, thus having distinct value experiences Vargo et al., 2015). For example, this might be the case when a group of sports fans from one specific institutional environment travels to other countries to watch games. A focal foreign fan collective might accidentally misinterpret and intentionally disrespect local institutions, given potential complexity or clashes with existing beliefs and practices. Consequently, in a scenario with high institutional complexity within the collective actor, it is likely that individuals receiving the same service provision will experience it differently . Therefore, we propose: Proposition 3: Institutional complexity within the collective actor influences the sharedness of collective value experiences such that the higher the institutional complexity, the lower the sharedness of the collective value experiences.
We further argue that institutional complexity can also influence value attribution. If an actor attributing value to a beneficiary is largely guided by the same institutional arrangements as they are, the value attribution will tend to be more accurate, positively guiding mutual expectations regarding actors' behaviors (Edvardsson et al., 2014). Conversely, the value attribution will tend to be less accurate in a scenario with high institutional complexity in which these actors use different sensemaking frames for value. Therefore, we propose: Proposition 4: Institutional complexity between the actor attributing value and the beneficiary influences the accuracy of value attributions such that the higher the institutional complexity, the less accurate the value attribution. Fig. 5 summarizes our understanding of value determination informed by our conceptualization of actor experience. It shows that individual actors can experience value with "I" or "we" as the beneficiaries, or they can attribute value to other individual or collective actors who are not included as beneficiaries. This leads to different forms of value determination, depending on who the beneficiary is in one's consciousness. Social interaction factors and institutions and institutional arrangements influence the sharedness of collective experiences and value attribution. Table 2 shows how we reconciled understandings from S-D logic and phenomenology to build our conceptualization of actor experience that has implications for how we understand value determination in S-D logic. Fig. 5. Value determination as value experience and value attribution.

Table 2
Reconciliation of understandings in S-D logic and phenomenology and implications for the conceptualization of actor experience.

Input Output
Origin Concept(s) Implications for actor experience Implications for S-D logic S-D logic Generic actor orientation (Vargo & Lusch, 2011) Definition of individual and collective actors (Premise 1a and 1b); transcending definition of actor experience (Premise 1)

Definition of individual and collective actors as value beneficiaries Phenomenology
Collectives, plural subjects (Chelstrom, 2012;Mathiesen, 2005;Stein, 1922Stein, /2000 S-D Logic Value, value-in-use, value-in-context (Akaka et al., 2021) Reference object of actor experience Value is the reference object of experience Phenomenology Noesis (i.e., reference object of experience) (Moustakas, 1994;Smith, 2003) S-D Logic Value determination Modes of experiencing Individual actors can feel, sense, think, imagine, etc. value, i.e., a change in their well-being or viability Phenomenology Noema (i.e., the process of experiencing) (Moustakas, 1994;Smith, 2003) S-D Logic Beneficiary (i.e., the actor experiencing value) (Akaka et al., 2021) Reference subject of actor experience The beneficiary is given in an individual consciousness in "I", "we", or "other" form Phenomenology Reference subject of experience (Burns, 2015;Carr, 1986;Chelstrom, 2012) S-D Logic Phenomenological view on experiences and value (Vargo & Lusch, 2008) Definition of individual experience (Premise 2) Presentation of value experience as a form of value determination (Premise 5)

Phenomenology
Sharedness (Mathiesen, 2005;Stein, 2000) S-D Logic Social interactions (Edvardsson et al., 2011;Meynhardt et al., 2016) Social interaction factors influence the sharedness of collective experiences Social interaction factors influence the degree of sharedness of collective value experiences (Proposition 2) and the degree of accuracy of value attributions (Proposition 3)

Conclusion
We present theoretical contributions to marketing generally and S-D logic specifically in the following section. Thereafter, we present practical implications. We conclude the article with implications for future research.

Theoretical contributions
In this article, we argued that marketing literature has traditionally provided individual theorizations of experience that leave out prevalent and relevant collective phenomena. We drew on S-D logic and phenomenology to build a mid-range conceptualization of actor experience (Vargo & Lusch, 2017) that can be applied to both individual and collective actors, thus providing a bridge between individual-and collective-level theorizing. This mid-range conceptualization contributes to the study of several marketing phenomena, especially collective phenomena.
We foresee application of our conceptualization of actor experience in many conceptual domains in marketing. The literature of customer experience has focused mainly on individual customer experience (Hamilton et al., 2021), even when examining B2B contexts (e.g., Witell et al., 2020). Our conceptualization can thus serve as a basis for phenomenological studies that seek to understand collective customer experiences, such as of families or other consumer groups. Studies on brand communities, subcultures of consumption, and tribes have traditionally adopted a sociological perspective to study collective phenomena (e.g., McAlexander et al., 2002). Our conceptualization could advance a better understanding of how such collectives phenomenologically experience brands and value. Moreover, collective trust (e.g., Kramer et al., 1996) and collective engagement (e.g., Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2019) are additional examples of collective phenomena that depend on similar theoretical characteristics.
Our conceptualization can also advance the B2B research domain. B2B contexts are characterized by multiperson phenomena and can benefit from our proposed theoretical perspective. For example, the buying center (Sheth, 1973) and usage center (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2017) are important B2B collectives whose experiences are relevant to understand. Indeed, the collective nature of these experiences can play a significant role in determining value perceptions in view of (un)successful business negotiations or usage experiences. The conceptualization of actor experience can thus help B2B researchers, for instance, to advance the understanding of value cocreation or sales processes involving collectives. Moreover, while mainstream B2B research has long acknowledged the role of groups or collectives, applications of an in-depth phenomenological perspective are rather scant (see, e.g., Waseem et al., 2018). Our research thus provides a foundation for more phenomenologically oriented research in B2B contexts that might unlock further value, helping to overcome the conventional, rather rationalistic and mechanistic perspectives on human beings in B2B environments. Overall, the conceptualization of actor experience can be applied to the theorization and empirical study of many marketing phenomena.
Furthermore, by demonstrating how our conceptualization can be applied to value determination, our article contributes to the S-D logic metatheory in three ways. First, even though experience is an important concept for S-D logic through its connection with value, existing S-D logic research has not elaborated on the implications of the generic actor orientation on how experience should be understood. Through our conceptualization, we integrate two building blocks-the phenomenological view of experiences and the generic actor orientation-within S-D logic metatheory, as called for by Vargo and Lusch (2017), to describe how experience (and, thus, value) emerges for both individual and collective actors.
Second, our conceptualization suggests two forms of value determination: value experience-whereby beneficiaries phenomenologically determine value-and value attribution-whereby actors who are not the beneficiaries determine value for them. This distinction is important because both forms of value determination happen all the time, and both guide actors' service exchange and resource integration efforts. While S-D logic has recently recognized that actors can determine value for others (Akaka et al., 2021), our conceptualization adds to that by clearly distinguishing between different forms of value determination. Third, our conceptualization not only defines value experience and value attribution but also describes some conditions that influence their emergence. More specifically, social interaction factors and institutional complexity can influence the degree to which collective experiences are shared and the degree to which value attributions are accurate. This delineation adds to previous literature that considers how institutions and institutional arrangements frame experience and value determination (e.g., Edvardsson et al., 2011).

Practical implications
Both individual and collective experiences are a prevalent phenomenon, as previously stated; hence, it is important that managers understand the experiences of several actors. B2B firms, organizational leaders, and brand managers should seek to understand their customers', employees', and brand communities' experiences, respectively.
First, practitioners need to recognize that both individual and collective experiences are important. For instance, previous research has shown that both individual and collective value experiences form the overall value that influences a firm's buying decisions and loyalty (Eggert et al., 2019;Huber & Kleinaltenkamp, 2020). Therefore, it is important to understand whether an individual's reference subject for an experience is the individual or a collective (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2022). Furthermore, marketing and sales endeavors should focus on both individual and collective experiences as the basis for value cocreation during the purchasing and usage processes.
Second, our conceptualization offers tools for practitioners to understand collective experiences as well. According to our conceptualization, one cannot aggregate individual experiences to understand the collective experience because these are qualitatively different. Instead, we suggest approaches to understand collective experiences using collectively formulated questions and items (e.g., "we") (Torrente et al., 2013), for example. Thus, practitioners who refer to the "wrong" reference subject of experiences run the risk not only of wasting resources but also of possibly even achieving effects that contradict the goals they are striving for.
Furthermore, practitioners should be warned against the temptation to arbitrarily define the collective actor, because our conceptualization states that the individual enacting the collective experience determines who is part of the collective actor. For instance, it is likely that a firm as a whole is not perceived as the value beneficiary of service provision; however, subgroups within this firm, such as the buying center and usage center, might form collective actors with distinct collective experiences. This has already been emphasized in the microsegmentation concept of buying center members (Wind & Cardozo, 1974); hence, this highlights the importance of understanding phenomenological collective experiences.
Our conceptualization of actor experience also acknowledges that collective experiences are likely never completely shared. It also shows that social interaction and institutional factors can influence their degree of sharedness. Therefore, practitioners who aim to increase the sharedness of collective experience within a collective actor can foster mechanisms such as emotional contagion, joint attention, solidarity, and openness through organizational practices (e.g., Burns, 2015Burns, , 2018Pacherie, 2017), as well as seek to understand the degree of institutional complexity within the collective actor Pacherie, 2017). However, if managers want to foster a variety of experiences, they could foster institutional complexity by, for example, increasing the diversity within the collective actor.
Finally, our conceptualization suggests that practitioners can also increase the degree to which they understand other individual and collective actors' experiences through fostering social interaction factors (e.g., hiring empathic employees, being solidary) and understanding the institutional context of the experiencing actor(s). Therefore, actors (e.g., service providers) who want to understand other actors' experiences (e. g., business customers) can use these mechanisms to try to make more accurate value attributions. This is relevant because these value attributions guide service exchange and resource integration efforts (Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2018).

Implications for future research
Our conceptualization of actor experience and illustration of how it informs value determination generates many avenues for future research regarding (1) the application of the mid-range conceptualization of actor experience to marketing phenomena, (2) methods and approaches for studying collective experiences, (3) the sharedness of collective experiences, (4) value attribution, and (5) value (Table 3).
We argued in the beginning of this article for the need to develop a conceptualization of experience that also encompasses collective experiences because of the prevalence of collective phenomena in marketing. We then used S-D logic and phenomenology to develop such conceptualization, which now can be applied to several areas of research such as B2B, customer experience, brand communities, and engagement. We encourage the use of our conceptualization in these domains to advance the understanding of collective phenomena through a phenomenological perspective.
Our conceptualization can also offer implications for the empirical study of collective experiences. Conceptualizing collective experience is the first step to understanding how to study it. However, methodological concerns were not explicitly addressed in this article; hence, we encourage future studies to explore how collective experiences can be empirically studied.
An interesting topic for future research refers to the sharedness of collective experiences. For example, individuals who act as decision makers in the name of a collective actor might be better equipped to make decisions if collective experiences are actually shared among individuals; that is, the more a decision maker within a collective actor is open to other individuals' experiences, the better their decisions will be. However, the homogeneity of experiences might present a trade-off (e. g., losses in creativity and innovation). We encourage researchers to investigate these assumptions and trade-offs.
We also assume that value attribution guides value cocreation activities, such as resource integration and service exchange. It would be interesting to investigate how this happens, as well as the positive and negative outcomes of (in)accurate value attribution or differences between the actors' value experience and the value attribution to them in value cocreation.
Finally, when applying the conceptualization of actor experience to value determination, we did not elaborate on the ontological view of value. While in this paper we have adopted a phenomenological perspective, a realist perspective (Hunt, 2002) may also view value as a measurable, objective, or objectifiable concept that, for instance, represents the change in the viability of a system and that exists independently from a focal actor's experience or awareness. It would therefore be fruitful to further examine value from a realist perspective and its relationships with the concepts introduced in this paper, such as value attribution.

Concluding remarks
Considering the individual-level theorization of experience in marketing, we draw on S-D logic and phenomenology to conceptualize actor experience. We provide a transcending conceptualization of actor experience that describes how experiences emerge for both individual and collective actors. We then illustrate how our conceptualization can be applied to marketing phenomena by describing different forms of value determination and how social interaction and institutional factors influence them. Our mid-range conceptualization of actor experience not only contributes to the general marketing literature but also informs the S-D logic metatheory. It is our hope that this conceptualization can spur future research, to which we offer a research agenda for guidance.  Table 3 Implications for future research.

Topic
Potential questions for future research Application of the mid-range conceptualization of actor experience to marketing phenomena -How can the concept of collective experience inform B2B research? -How do individual and collective experiences interact in brand communities? -How can the actor experience concept be used to study collective customer experiences throughout collective customer journeys? -How do social interaction factors such as solidarity and empathy foster collective engagement? Methods to study collective experiences -How to define the unit of analysis to study the collective experience? -How can researchers encourage individuals to talk about their collective experiences? -How to account for the different perspectives of collective experiences within a collective actor? Sharedness of collective experiences -What other mechanisms beyond social interaction and institutional factors influence the sharedness of collective experiences? -What are the consequences of a low degree of sharedness of experiences within a collective actor? -Does a better understanding of other actors' experiences result in decisions that are more valuable for the collective actor? Value attribution -How does value attribution guide resource integration and service exchange? -What are the positive and negative outcomes of (in)accurate value attribution among actors? -How does the accuracy of value attribution influence value cocreation processes? Value -What are the implications of a realist conceptualization of value to S-D logic? -How does a realist perspective of value relate to the different forms of value determination which are inherently phenomenological? -How can a realist perspective of value be reconciled with a phenomenological perspective of value determination?

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.