Co-creation for Customer Engagement Management: When do they Want to Talk? An Abstract

Firms are increasingly promoting user-designed products, but earlier work revealed a mitigated effect of customers’ reactions towards customer participation in new product development (e.g., Haumann et al. 2015). In this study, we explore the user-design effect by comparing consumers’ perceptions if a product is developed in collaboration with fans of a brand or any average consumers. We also test if the effect on (1) the perception of co-created product and (2) sending WOM to others could be moderated by the perceived complexity of the product category. To answer this question, we build on social identity (Tajfel and Turner 1986) and social comparison (Locke 2003) theories. Both let us think that consumers’ reactions regarding the co-created product would be improved if a product is co-designed with a fan of the brand (compared with ordinary users). However, this effect may be reduced when the product is perceived as complex. Based on the previous theoretical development, we hypothesize that (1) Product class involvement, (2) Domain-specific knowledge, and (3) Similarity with fans will affect positively the perception of the co-created product and, in turn, spreading WOM. We tested the hypotheses with an online questionnaire survey. Data collection was conducted by a professional market research agency with a representative sample of 240 Japanese consumers. Product selection was based on the perceived complexity of the product: beer represents low-complexity consumer product, whereas cars are perceived as high-complexity consumer goods. The results show that, in all cases, consumers who are involved in the product class tend to perceive positively the co-created products, both for low- and high-complexity products. The product class involvement however affects WOM intention only for the cases of co-developing a beer with ordinary consumers or with fans, not for cars. If consumers are knowledgeable about the product category, they tend to spread WOM on the product co-created with both ordinary consumers and with fans, in both cases of beers and cars. However, it does not influence the perception of the co-created product except for the case of developing a car with ordinary consumers. One of the most interesting findings is that, when consumers feel similar and familiar with the fans of their favorite manufacturer, they tend to evaluate the co-created product higher in both cases of co-creation with ordinary consumers and with fans. However, similarity with fans does not affect the level of WOM for all the cases. Finally, the level of WOM is improved by the perception of the co-created product for both categories.