Customer participation and value creation: a systematic review and research implications

Purpose – Customer participation in the creation of offerings has become a key focus in marketing literature. This paper synthesizes extant research on the topic to enhance understanding of the conceptualization and value outcomes of customer participation in the creation of offerings.Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on an extensive, systematic literature review covering 163 articles on customer participation published over the last four decades. Selected publications were analyzed according to the topics studied, study context, research approach, and findings.Findings – The review demonstrates how the conceptualization of customer participation has evolved in terms of the nature and range of customer contributions, their temporal scope, and the outcomes considered. It also synthesizes the hypothesized and empirically scrutinized value outcomes of customer participation for both sellers and customers.Research limitations/implications – The review reveals important gaps in the existing know...

[1]  David M. Woisetschläger,et al.  How to Make Brand Communities Work: Antecedents and Consequences of Consumer Participation , 2008 .

[2]  C. Prahalad,et al.  Co‐creating unique value with customers , 2004 .

[3]  T. Levitt.  Production-Line Approach to Service , 2012 .

[4]  Susan Schultz Kleine,et al.  Customer Participation in Services Production and Delivery , 2000 .

[5]  O. Chervonnaya,et al.  Customer role and skill trajectories in services , 2003 .

[6]  V. Ramaswamy,et al.  The Power of Co-Creation: Build It with Them to Boost Growth, Productivity, and Profits , 2010 .

[7]  Peter K. Mills,et al.  Motivating the client/employee system as a service production strategy. , 1983, Academy of management review. Academy of Management.

[8]  Dale Fodness,et al.  From customer to competitor: consumer cooption in the service sector , 1993 .

[9]  E. Anderson,et al.  The Antecedents and Consequences of Customer Satisfaction for Firms , 1993 .

[10]  Simon S. K. Lam,et al.  Is Customer Participation in Value Creation a Double-Edged Sword? Evidence from Professional Financial Services across Cultures , 2010 .

[11]  Deborah L. Kellogg,et al.  On the relationship between customer participation and satisfaction: two frameworks , 1997 .

[12]  Satish Nambisan,et al.  Different Roles, Different Strokes: Organizing Virtual Customer Environments to Promote Two Types of Customer Contributions , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[13]  R B Chase,et al.  Where does the customer fit in a service operation? , 1978, Harvard business review.

[14]  Mats Magnusson,et al.  How do firms make use of open source communities , 2008 .

[15]  Scott W. Kelley,et al.  Customer participation in service production and delivery. , 1990 .

[16]  Eric von Hippel,et al.  The Journal of Product Innovation Management 18 (2001) 247–257 PERSPECTIVE: User toolkits for innovation , 2022 .

[17]  Arash Shahin,et al.  Integration of CRM and QFD , 2008 .

[18]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing , 2004 .

[19]  B. Edvardsson,et al.  A customer‐dominant logic of service , 2010 .

[20]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Competing through service: Insights from service-dominant logic , 2007 .

[21]  Eric W.T. Ngai,et al.  Internet marketing research (1987‐2000): a literature review and classification , 2003 .

[22]  Kajri Misra,et al.  Whose house is it? Exploring user participation in the design process of residences , 2002 .

[23]  Deborah L. Kellogg,et al.  Revisiting customer participation in service encounters: does culture matter? , 2003 .

[24]  T. Milewa,et al.  User participation in service planning. A qualitative approach to gauging the impact of managerial attitudes. , 1997, Journal of management in medicine.

[25]  Ragnhild Kvålshaugen,et al.  Choosing to Learn and Learning to Choose: Strategies for Client Co-Production and Knowledge Development , 2007 .

[26]  Peter R. Magnusson,et al.  Managing User Involvement in Service Innovation , 2003 .

[27]  Adriaan T.H. Pruyn,et al.  Customer control and evaluation of service validity and reliability , 1998 .

[28]  Solveig Wikström,et al.  The customer as co‐producer , 1996 .

[29]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Service-Dominant Logic as a Foundation for Service Science: Clarifications , 2009 .

[30]  Michael R. Bowers,et al.  Trading Places: Employees as Customers, Customers as Employees , 1990 .

[31]  M. Gabbott.  Undertaking a literature review in marketing , 2004 .

[32]  Eric von Hippel,et al.  User toolkits for innovation , 2001 .

[33]  An-tien Hsieh,et al.  The Effect of Consumer Participation on Price Sensitivity , 2004 .

[34]  An-Tien Hsieh,et al.  Participative customers as partial employees and service provider workload , 2004 .

[35]  R. Bagozzi,et al.  Antecedents and purchase consequences of customer participation in small group brand communities , 2006 .

[36]  Markus Groth.  Customers as Good Soldiers: Examining Citizenship Behaviors in Internet Service Deliveries , 2005 .

[37]  Mary Jo Bitner,et al.  Customer contributions and roles in service delivery , 1997 .

[38]  Michael Etgar.  A descriptive model of the consumer co-production process , 2008 .

[39]  Peter K. Mills,et al.  Perspectives on the Technology of Service Operations , 1982 .

[40]  C. Grönroos,et al.  Service as business logic: implications for value creation and marketing , 2011 .

[41]  E. Shih,et al.  Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services , 2007 .

[42]  C. Grönroos.  Service logic revisited: who creates value? And who co‐creates? , 2008 .

[43]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Marketing solutions in accordance with the S-D logic: Co-creating value with customer network actors , 2008 .

[44]  Magne Supphellen,et al.  Consumer Participation in Coproduction: “I Made it Myself” Effects on Consumers’ Sensory Perceptions and Evaluations of Outcome and Input Product , 2012 .

[45]  Kenneth R. Evans,et al.  The effects of customer participation in co-created service recovery , 2008 .

[46]  Franz Tödtling,et al.  Effects of the Internet on the spatial structure of innovation networks , 2003, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[47]  G. Tomas M. Hult,et al.  Classifying health care offerings to gain strategic marketing insights , 1995 .

[48]  James A. Fitzsimmons,et al.  Consumer Participation and Productivity in Service Operations , 1985 .

[49]  Pernille Kræmmergaard,et al.  A comprehensive literature review of the ERP research field over a decade , 2010, J. Enterp. Inf. Manag..

[50]  Amy L. Ostrom,et al.  Client Co-Production in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services , 2002 .

[51]  P. A. Dabholkar,et al.  Consumer participation in using online recommendation agents: effects on satisfaction, trust, and purchase intentions , 2012 .

[52]  Jerry Wind,et al.  Customerization: The next revolution in mass customization , 2001 .

[53]  Amy L. Ostrom,et al.  Loyalty programs and a sense of community , 2005 .

[54]  K. File,et al.  Interactive Marketing: The Influence of Participation on Positive Word‐of‐Mouth and Referrals , 1992 .

[55]  Eric Fang.  Customer Participation and the Trade-Off between New Product Innovativeness and Speed to Market , 2008 .

[56]  Robert Johnston.  The Customer as Employee , 1989 .

[57]  Richard Nicholls,et al.  New directions for customer‐to‐customer interaction research , 2010 .

[58]  E. Jaakkola,et al.  Value co-creation in knowledge intensive business services: A dyadic perspective on the joint problem solving process , 2012 .

[59]  A. Nill,et al.  The state of internet marketing research , 2007 .

[60]  K. File,et al.  Customer Participation In Service Specification And Delivery , 2011 .

[61]  C. Ennew,et al.  Impact of Participative Service Relationships on Quality, Satisfaction and Retention: An Exploratory Study , 1999 .

[62]  Tor Guimaraes,et al.  The Relationship Between User Participation and User Satisfaction: An Investigation of Four Contingency Factors , 1994, MIS Q..

[63]  C. Lengnick-Hall.  Customer Contributions to Quality: A Different View of the Customer-Oriented Firm , 1996 .

[64]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Service-dominant logic: reactions, reflections and refinements , 2006 .

[65]  Gian Luca Marzocchi,et al.  Self-scanning technologies in retail: Determinants of adoption , 2006 .

[66]  An-Tien Hsieh,et al.  The effect of customer participation on service providers' job stress , 2005 .

[67]  Bruce Tether,et al.  Beyond industry–university links: Sourcing knowledge for innovation from consultants, private research organisations and the public science-base , 2008 .

[68]  Charles M. Brooks,et al.  Partial Employees and Consumers , 2001 .

[69]  Robert P. Leone,et al.  Psychological Implications of Customer Participation in Co-Production , 2003 .

[70]  K. Ruyter,et al.  Customer Loyalty in High and Low Involvement Service Settings: The Moderating Impact of Positive Emotions , 1999 .

[71]  Margaret K. Hogg,et al.  Service recovery following dysfunctional consumer participation , 2012 .

[72]  D. Tranfield,et al.  Producing a systematic review. , 2009 .

[73]  H. Yen.  An attribute-based model of quality satisfaction for Internet self-service technology , 2005 .