Date of Award

Summer 2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Department

Marketing and Analysis

First Advisor

Barry J. Babin

Abstract

Customer co-creation has been recognized in the marketing literature as a beneficial activity for both firms and customers, however, further research is needed to more fully understand how firms and customers work together to maximize the value creations. In order to extend this area, the present study conducts two studies to empirically test how customer participation interacts with other factors to influence customer shopping experience and behavior responses.

In the experiment study, an updated typology of service context was developed to examine how customer input and service provider input along other factors to influence value co-creation outcomes. A computer stimulated gift shopping experiment is designed to examine customer co-creations across four service contexts (relational service context, customer dominant service context, service provider dominant service context, and discrete service context). In the experiment study, the authors report the study results through recruiting 189 student subjects to answer how they felt after reading one of sixteen developed scenarios. In the survey study, a conceptual model is proposed for testing how service provider customer orientation and customer participation work together to influence customer experiences and corresponding behaviors. Using data collected from 415 consumers registered on the panel list of a market survey company, SEM techniques are used to examine how the value propositions offered by sellers and customer coproductions produce outcome. The customer participation in survey study is identified as two-dimensional construct, customer participation (information resource) and customer participation (codeveloper).

The results suggest that customer orientation constantly enhances customers' hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions and behavior responses such as satisfaction and WOM. Further, it is found that the impacts of customer orientation on outcomes are become stronger when the level of trust in service provider is relatively low. These findings highlight that service provider who practice a customer orientation is more likely to better service customers and achieve positive outcomes.

The customer co-creation behaviors investigated across both studies produce mixed results. The results of experiment study suggest that subjects in high customer input group perceived higher hedonic value comparing to their counterparts. Additionally, there is no difference for perceived utilitarian value across two groups. The results of experiment study also suggest that customers develop higher emotional attachment toward the service provider when both customer input and service provider input levels are high (relational service context). That is, the intense interactions between sellers and buyers increase buyers' emotional belongings toward the sellers.

The results based on survey study suggest that customer participation (information resource) is negatively related to customer experiences and responses. However, the results indicate another dimension of customer participation (codeveloper) is positively related to the same outcomes. Together, these findings suggest that customer participation do influence value co-creations but the relationships are not clear.

Included in

Marketing Commons

Share

COinS