Customer benefits and value co-creation activities in corporate social networking services

ABSTRACT Despite the growing importance of customers as value co-creators, little is known about their reasons for voluntarily participating in value co-creation activities. Based on expectancy-value theory, this paper empirically examines the specific benefits that customers anticipate from engaging in certain co-creation activities. Furthermore, it examines the manner in which interactions between customer benefits and joint activities/industry types influence customers’ intentions to continuously engage in value co-creation in the context of corporate social networking service (SNS)-based virtual customer environments (VCEs). Study data were collected from 327 corporate Facebook and Twitter VCE users through an online panel survey. Results of the main effect relationships reveal that all three customer benefits – cognitive, social integrative, and hedonic – significantly impacted customer intentions to continuously participate in value co-creation. Furthermore, the benefit–intention relationships differed depending upon the type of co-creation activities (e.g. ideation, design, testing, support, and marketing) and industry characteristics. Theoretical discussions about these results are provided, and implications for future research and practice are presented.

[1]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution , 2008 .

[2]  Lukas Furst,et al.  Multivariate Data Analysis With Readings , 2016 .

[3]  Virpi Roto,et al.  Defining user experience goals to guide the design of industrial systems , 2015, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[4]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Virtual Product Experience: Effects of Visual and Functional Control of Products on Perceived Diagnosticity and Flow in Electronic Shopping , 2004, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[5]  Gary L. Lilien,et al.  Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[6]  Rajiv Sabherwal,et al.  Usability and Sociability in Online Communities: A Comparative Study of Knowledge Seeking and Contribution , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[7]  C. Prahalad,et al.  Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation , 2004 .

[8]  Rolph E. Anderson,et al.  Multivariate data analysis with readings (2nd ed.) , 1986 .

[9]  G. Tellis,et al.  Research on Innovation: A Review and Agenda for Marketing Science , 2006 .

[10]  Daniel L. Sherrell,et al.  Communications of the Association for Information Systems , 1999 .

[11]  J. Perry-Smith.  Social Yet Creative: The Role Of Social Relationships In Facilitating Individual Creativity , 2006 .

[12]  David T. Wilson,et al.  The Future of Competition , 2001 .

[13]  Richard P. Bagozzi,et al.  Assessing Construct Validity in Organizational Research , 1991 .

[14]  Marjolein C. J. Caniëls,et al.  Value cocreation in service interactions , 2015 .

[15]  Frieder R. Lang,et al.  Endings and Continuity of Social Relationships: Maximizing Intrinsic Benefits within Personal Networks when Feeling Near to Death , 2000 .

[16]  Victor R. Prybutok,et al.  Connection, trust, and commitment: dimensions of co-creation? , 2011 .

[17]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Structural Equation Modeling and Regression: Guidelines for Research Practice , 2000, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[18]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[19]  S. Nambisan,et al.  Interactions in virtual customer environments: Implications for product support and customer relationship management , 2007 .

[20]  Youjae Yi,et al.  Customer value co-creation behavior: scale development and validation , 2013 .

[21]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Critical perspectives on consumers’ role as ‘producers’: Broadening the debate on value co-creation in marketing processes , 2011 .

[22]  A. Joinson.  Self‐disclosure in computer‐mediated communication: The role of self‐awareness and visual anonymity , 2001 .

[23]  Paul A. Pavlou,et al.  From IT Leveraging Competence to Competitive Advantage in Turbulent Environments: The Case of New Product Development , 2006, Inf. Syst. Res..

[24]  Bernard C. Y. Tan,et al.  A Cross-Cultural Study on Escalation of Commitment Behavior in Software Projects , 2000, MIS Q..

[25]  Ju-Young M. Kang.  Customer interface design for customer co-creation in the social era , 2017, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[26]  D. Goleman.  Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ , 1995 .

[27]  L. Men,et al.  Toward an Integrated Model of Public Engagement on Corporate Social Networking Sites: Antecedents, the Process, and Relational Outcomes , 2013 .

[28]  V. Kumar,et al.  Interaction Orientation and Firm Performance , 2008 .

[29]  A. Molina,et al.  Collaborative networked organisations and customer communities: value co-creation and co-innovation in the networking era , 2011 .

[30]  S. Roy,et al.  Value co-creation with Internet of things technology in the retail industry , 2017 .

[31]  Edward L. Deci,et al.  Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior , 1975, Perspectives in Social Psychology.

[32]  Ohad Inbar,et al.  Lowering the line of visibility: incidental users in service encounters , 2012, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[33]  Nicholas W. Kohn,et al.  Collaborative fixation: effects of others' ideas on brainstorming , 2011 .

[34]  G. R. Gangadharan,et al.  Enhancing Cocreation Using Social Media , 2015, IT Professional.

[35]  S. Nambisan,et al.  Virtual Customer Environments: Testing a Model of Voluntary Participation in Value Co‐creation Activities , 2009 .

[36]  R. Gunderman,et al.  Emotional intelligence. , 2011, Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR.

[37]  Thomas C. O'Guinn,et al.  brand community , 2022, The Fairchild Books Dictionary of Fashion.

[38]  Alexander Hars,et al.  Web Based Knowledge Infrastructures for the Sciences: An Adaptive Document , 2000, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[39]  H. Kjellberg,et al.  How users shape markets , 2016 .

[40]  Kyung Kyu Kim,et al.  Information and communication technology overload and social networking service fatigue: A stress perspective , 2016, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[41]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. , 1981 .

[42]  E. Deci,et al.  The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior , 2000 .

[43]  J. Eccles.  Expectancies, values and academic behaviors , 1983 .

[44]  Satish Nambisan,et al.  Virtual Customer Environments: IT-Enabled Customer Co-innovation and Value Co-creation , 2009, Information Technology and Product Development.

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

[46]  Katherine N. Lemon,et al.  Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions , 2010 .

[47]  Mark A. Fuller,et al.  Designing Interfaces with Social Presence: Using Vividness and Extraversion to Create Social Recommendation Agents , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[48]  L. Xia,et al.  Trading Effort for Money , 2014 .

[49]  Michael Diehl,et al.  Productivity loss in idea-generating groups: Tracking down the blocking effect. , 1991 .

[50]  Giuditta Pezzotta,et al.  Collaborative product-service systems engineering: Towards an active role of customers and stakeholders in value co-creation , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC).

[51]  M. Lindell,et al.  Accounting for common method variance in cross-sectional research designs. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[52]  M. Sawhney,et al.  Collaborating to create: The Internet as a platform for customer engagement in product innovation , 2005 .

[53]  Johann Füller,et al.  Community based innovation: How to integrate members of virtual communities into new product development , 2006, Electron. Commer. Res..

[54]  Wayne D. Hoyer,et al.  Consumer Cocreation in New Product Development , 2010 .

[55]  Dahui Li,et al.  Task Design, Motivation, and Participation in Crowdsourcing Contests , 2011, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[56]  Suvi Nenonen,et al.  Managing Co‐Creation Design: A Strategic Approach to Innovation , 2015 .

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

[58]  V. Ramaswamy.  Leading the transformation to co‐creation of value , 2009 .

[59]  Kevin K. W. Ho,et al.  Value co-creation and purchase intention in social network sites: The role of electronic Word-of-Mouth and trust - A theoretical analysis , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[60]  Gang Peng,et al.  Network ties and the success of open source software development , 2013, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[61]  P. M. Podsakoff,et al.  Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects , 1986 .

[62]  Heleen J. Pott,et al.  Emotional Intelligence - why it can matter more than IQ [Review of: D. Goleman. Recensie] , 1996 .

[63]  Alain Pinsonneault,et al.  Electronic Brainstorming: The Illusion of Productivity , 1999, Inf. Syst. Res..

[64]  F. Rothaermel,et al.  Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com , 2001 .

[65]  C. Prahalad,et al.  The New Frontier of Experience Innovation , 2003 .

[66]  A. Martini,et al.  Customer Co-Creation Projects and the Social Media: The Case of Barilla of Italy , 2013 .

[67]  P. Nambisan,et al.  How to Profit From a Better ¿Virtual Customer Environment¿ , 2008 .

[68]  G. Noci,et al.  How to Sustain the Customer Experience:: An Overview of Experience Components that Co-create Value With the Customer , 2007 .