Measuring the unmeasured: An exploratory study of customer co-creation

Measuring the unmeasured: An exploratory study of customer co-creation

Ayunia, S.

Van Beers, C.P. (mentor)
Den Hartigh, E. (mentor)
Ortt, J.R. (mentor)
Van der Voort, H. (mentor)

Technology, Policy and Management

Technology, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship

Management of Technology

2013-11-15

A shift is happening across industries, the traditional firm-centric, product-centric, service-centric meaning of value and the process of value creation paradigm is being challenged by personalized consumer experiences paradigm. Customer co-creation, as the up-and-coming paradigm might provide an answer for the posed challenges of today’s world. Customer co-creation emerges created at the intersection of different fields of knowledge such as design, marketing and innovation. Therefore, the concept of customer co-creation has been described through different lenses of research. This in turn lead to no consensus of what customer co-creation is. Moreover claims on the implementation of customer co-creation implementation in innovation process, could lead to sustainable competitive advantage. Although such claims has been made, there is no measurement instrument develop for customer co-creation that will help researcher in proving this causal relationship. Therefore before researches on testing and proving relation between customer co-creation and other concepts such as sustainable competitive advantage could be done, a construct of customer co-creation should first be proposed. One characteristic of construct is that it is measurable. This construct is a foundation for developing measures of customer co-creation. The objectives of this research are to summarize previously-researched co-creation concepts and furthermore propose a construct of customer co-creation, and to propose measures of co-creation. Before recommendations on measures of customer co-creation can be given; a construct needs to be defined first. Serving as building blocks for the customer co-creation construct are the dimensions of customer co-creation. Dimensions of customer co-creation were identified and validated from literature review and academia interview. In total 15 dimensions are identified. This research uses nomological network to build the construct. Nomological network is a representation of the concepts of interest in a study, their observable manifestations, and the interrelationships among and between these. It is a tool to ensure construct validation of a construct. After a validated dimensions of co-creation were obtained, a categorization is done to these dimensions using customer co-creation related concepts as categories to draw the interrelationships of among the concepts. In categorizing, a sorting task with Management of Technology students as respondents was done to ensure the face validity. Since no empirical data for any dimension was collected during the research, the nomological network is preliminary in nature. From this process a proposed definition of customer co-creation was formulated. “Customer co-creation is a tool used in innovation process that engages customers as active problem owners in collaboration with firm, during which different size and types of customer groups might participate in the process that is governed and stimulated by the firm to create co-created values as expected in the initiation.” Upon defining the construct of co-creation using nomological network, it is possible to operationalize customer co-creation by defining the methodology and indicators. However the indicators and methodologies presented here are suggestive. These indicators and methodologies are formulated through literature review and interviews with industry experts. The findings of this research are relevant not only for researcher but also for firm manager. The results achieved in this research are relevant for both researcher and firm. This research serves as a starting point for researcher who aspires to enrich the body of knowledge on customer co-creation measurement. As for firm, the insights from this research can be used in different ways, as a base to decide on co-creation implementation, to measure performance, or to evaluate previous co-creation activities, depending on the stage of co-creation implementation the firm is in.

customer co-creation
innovation process
construct
nomological network
measurement

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:724b687f-3c9b-40f4-8a84-6b22cab92c59

2013-12-31

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Ayunia, S.