Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the US-based (American) physiotherapy customers’ goals to engage in value cocreation activities during their well-being experience. Design/methodology/approach: The authors perform Smart PLS-SEM analysis of the primary data of physiotherapy service customers in the USA. Findings: The findings show that the US well-being customer engages in physiotherapy for individualizing, empowering, development, concerted and ethical motives but not for relating motives. These findings are contrasted with previous research to show that the service-dominant logic is not sufficient to account for the contextual complexity of the well-being experience and to explain the identified differences across culturally different customer segments. Research limitations/implications: By integrating insights from health-care and cross-cultural literature, the authors highlight the importance of relationship dynamics, culture and institutional context in well-being sector and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the cocreation behaviors in this industry. This helps advance the value cocreation research in well-being sector and promote the well-being experiences such as physiotherapy. Originality/value: The authors draw from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and challenge the service-dominant (S-D) logic as insufficient in explaining the value cocreation between the customer and expert in the well-being sector. The authors adapt physician–patient relationship model from health-care literature and cultural values of power distance from cross-cultural literature to complement the S-D logic to account for the complexity and nuanced context of the well-being cocreation experience.