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Examines both consultant and client perceptions of the consulting relationship, focusing on internal process consultants and a sample of their clients. Employs a procedure based on repertory grid technique to elicit dimensions of client‐consultant relationships from 22 consultants and 16 of their clients within a major UK company. Develops a questionnaire in order to determine the importance and frequency of these dimensions, and also to investigate any perceived differences between the views of clients and consultants. Dimensions fell within four broad categories: clients’ skills and behaviours; consultants’ skills and behaviours; contract details or the logistics of the project; and dimensions focusing specifically on the client‐consultant relationship. Clients focused particularly on the contract details, placing less emphasis on the importance of either their own skills and behaviours or the relationship they formed with the consultant. Consultants, on the other hand, viewed relationship building as most important. Makes recommendations for establishing and enhancing client‐consultant relationships.

Following an interpretivist approach, the authors draw on semi-structured interviews with parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Responding to limited academic advancement, particularly in the context of consumers experiencing vulnerability, the aim is to deepen marketing scholars’ understanding of value co-destruction (VCD) and its under-explored relationship with consumer ill-being.

Three forms of systemic VCD mechanisms emerged: obscuring, gaslighting and siloing. Ill-being comprised material, physical, psychological and social harms, which consumers experienced individually, relationally and collectively due to VCD. Family members’ experiences of ill-being and vulnerability were deepened by service systems’ inability to recognise the individuality of their needs and provide appropriate support.

In line with the interpretivist paradigm, the focus on families of children with ASD, while illuminating, delimits the generalisability of the findings. The authors call for further research on consumer ill-being, VCD and vulnerability in other service and marketing contexts.

The findings highlight the need for service system adaptability to recognise and address unstandardised needs.

Several systemic failures of (public) service systems which manifested as VCD mechanisms are identified.

The overall contribution is the development of a contextually driven characterisation of both VCD and ill-being and a deeper understanding of how these are interrelated. First, VCD revealed itself as a systemic failure to access, provide or integrate resources to meet actors’ needs as manifested by the three mechanisms. Second, the authors characterise ill-being as comprising material, physical, psychological and social harms due to VCD, which are experienced individually, relationally and collectively. Finally, the authors illuminate the nature of vulnerability and delineate the entanglements between vulnerability and ill-being in a collective (e.g. family) context.