Abstract
This article aims to study the effects of online co-creation on consumer behavior in terms of customer loyalty and purchase intention. In contrast to the existing literature that focuses on the results of co-creation or on participants’ perceptions of companies using co-creation, we focus on lead userness and opinion leadership of consumers during new product and service development. The empirical study is based on 303 consumers from the fast-moving consumer goods industry. Our findings suggest that online co-creation has significant effects on lead userness, opinion leadership, and consumer behavior. Our findings further indicate that lead userness is a full mediator between online co-creation and opinion leadership. Our study contributes to the research gap about the effect of co-creation on consumer behavior of lead users—the most innovative of consumers—and opinion leaders, who have the capacity to influence other consumers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adjei, T., Griffith, A., & Noble, M. (2009). When do relationships pay off for small retailers? Exploring targets and contexts to understand the value of relationship marketing. Journal of Retailing, 85(4), 493–501.
Anderson, J. C., & Gerbing, D. W. (1988). Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103(3), 411–423.
Auh, S., Bell, S. J., McLeod, C. S., & Shih, E. (2007). Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services. Journal of Retailing, 83(3), 359–370.
Bagozzi, R., & Yi, Y. (1988). On the evaluation of structural equation models. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 16(1), 74–94.
Baldus, B. J., Voorhees, C., & Calantone, R. (2015). Online brand community engagement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 68(5), 978–985.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173–1182.
Béji-Bécheur, A., & Gollety, M. (2007). Lead user et leader d’opinion: Deux cibles majeures au service de l’innovation. Décisions Marketing, 48, 21–35.
Bharti, K., Agrawal, R., & Sharma, V. (2015). Value co-creation literature review and proposed conceptual framework. International Journal of Market Research, 57(4), 571–603.
Bollen, K. A., & Stine, R. (1990). Direct and indirect effects: Classical and bootstrap estimates of variability. Sociological Methodology, 20, 115–140.
Brady, M. K., & Cronin, J. J. (2001). Customer orientation: Effects on customer service perceptions and outcome behaviors. Journal of Service Research, 3(3), 241–251.
Brakus, J. J., Schmitt, B. H., & Zarantonello, L. (2009). Brand experience: What is it? How is it measured? Does it affect loyalty? Journal of Marketing, 73(3), 52–68.
Brodie, R. J., Illic, A., Juric, B., & Hollebeek, L. D. (2013). Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 105–114.
Brown, T. J., & Dacin, P. A. (1997). The company and the product: Corporate associations and consumer product responses. Journal of Marketing, 61(1), 68–84.
Churchill, G. A. J. (1979). A paradigm for developing better measures of marketing constructs. Journal of Marketing Research, 16(1), 64–73.
Cossío-Silva, F.-J., Revilla-Camacho, M.-A., Vega-Vazquez, M., & Palacios, B. (2015). Value co-creation and customer loyalty. Journal of Business Research, 69(5), 1621–1625.
Fidel, P., Schlesinger, W., & Cervera, A. (2015). Collaborating to innovate: Effects on customer knowledge management and performance. Journal of Business Research, 68(7), 1426–1428.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50.
Frambach, R. T., Roest, H. C., & Krishnan, T. V. (2007). The impact of consumer internet experience on channel preference and usage intentions across the different stages of the buying process. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 21(2), 26–41.
Franke, N., von Hippel, E., & Schreier, M. (2006). Finding commercially attractive user innovation: A test of lead-user theory. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23(4), 301–315.
Fuchs, C., & Schreier, M. (2011). Customer empowerment in new product development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(1), 17–32.
Gebauer, J., Füller, J., & Pezzei, R. (2013). The dark and the bright side of co-creation: Triggers of member behavior in online innovation communities. Journal of Business Research, 66(9), 1516–1527.
Grewal, D., Levy, M., & Kumar, V. (2009). Customer experience management in retailing: Anorganizingframework. Journal of Retailing, 85(1), 1–14.
Griffin, A., & Hauser, J. R. (1993). The voice of the customer. Marketing Science, 12(1), 1–27.
Hagel, J., III, & Armstrong, A. G. (1997). Net Gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities. McKinsey Quarterly, 1, 140–153.
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York: Guilford Press.
Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory, 5(1), 1–22.
Hazan, C., & Zeifman, D. (1999). Pair bonds as attachments: Evaluating the evidence. In J. Shaver & P. R. Cassidy (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 336–354). New York: Guilford Press.
Hoffman, D. L., Kopalle, P. K., & Novak, T. P. (2010). The “right” consumers for better concepts: Identifying consumers high in emergent nature to develop new product concepts. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(5), 854–865.
Hollebeek, L. D. (2011). Demystifying customer brand engagement: Exploring the loyalty nexus. Journal of Marketing Management, 27(7–8), 785–807.
Holmbeck, G. N. (1997). Toward terminological, conceptual, and statistical clarity in the study of mediators and moderators: Examples from the child-clinical and pediatric psychology literatures. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65(4), 599–610.
Hsieh, J., & Hsieh, Y. (2015). Dialogic co-creation and service innovation performance in high-tech companies. Journal of Business Research, 68(11), 2266–2271.
Jaakkola, E. (2014). The role of customer engagement behavior in value co-creation: A service system perspective. Journal of Service Research, 17(3), 247–261.
Jin, S.-A. A., & Phua, J. (2014). Following celebrities’ tweets about brands: The impact of Twitter-based electronic word-of-mouth on consumers’ source credibility perception, buying intention, and social identification with celebrities. Journal of Advertising, 43(2), 181–195.
Keller, K. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1–22.
Kline, R. B. (1998). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York: Guilford Press.
Kozinets, R. V., de Valck, K., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. S. (2010). Networked narratives: Understanding word-of-mouth marketing in online communities. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 71–89.
Kunz, W., Schmitt, B., & Meyer, A. (2011). How does perceived firm innovativeness affect the consumer? Journal of Business Research, 64(8), 816–822.
Liljddal, K. (2016). The effects of advertising consumer co-created new products. Journal of Advertising Research, 56(1), 53–63.
Martin, W. C., & Lueg, J. E. (2013). Modeling word-of-mouth usage. Journal of Business Research, 66(7), 801–808.
Moreau, C. P., & Herd, K. B. (2010). To each his own? How comparisons with others influence consumers’ evaluations of their self-designed products. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(5), 806–819.
Morgan-Thomas, A., & Veloutsou, C. (2013). Beyond technology acceptance: Brand relationships and online brand experience. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), 21–27.
Nambisan, S., & Baron, R. A. (2007). Interactions in vortual customer environments: Implications for product support and customer relationship management. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 21(2), 42–63.
Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Nysveen, H., & Pedersen, P. E. (2014). Influences of co-creation on brand experience: The role of brand engagement. International Journal of Market Research, 56(6), 807–832.
Palmatier, R. W., Dant, R. P., Grewal, D., & Evans, K. R. (2006). Factors influencing the effectiveness of relationship marketing. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 136–153.
Payne, A., & Frow, P. (2005). A strategic framework for customer relationship management. Journal of Marketing, 69(4), 167–176.
Podsakoff, P. M., & Organ, D. W. (1986). Self-reports in organizaitonal research: Problems and prospects. Journal of Management, 12(4), 531–544.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Lee, J.-Y. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879–903.
Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2000). Co-opting customer competence. Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 79–87.
Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). Co-creation experiences the next practice in value. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18(3), 5–14.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 879–891.
Putrevu, S., & Lord, K. R. (1994). Comparative and noncomparative advertising: Attitudinal effects under cognitive and affective involvement conditions. Journal of Advertising, 23(2), 77–91.
Rafiq, M., Fulford, H., & Lu, X. (2013). Building customer loyalty in online retailing: The role of relationship quality. Journal of Marketing Management, 29(3–4), 494–517.
Ramaswamy, V., & Ozcan, K. (2015). Brand value co-creation in a digitalized world: An integrative framework and research implications. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(1), 93–106. doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2015.07.001.
Reinartz, W., & Kumar, V. (2000). On the profitability of long-life customers in a no contractual setting: An empirical investigation and implications for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 64(4), 17–35.
Reynolds, F. D., & Darden, W. R. (1971). Mutually adaptive effects of interpersonal communication. Journal of Marketing Research, 8(4), 449–454.
Sashi, C. M. (2012). Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management Decision, 50(2), 253–272.
Sawhney, M., Verona, G., & Prandelli, E. (2005). Collaborating to create: The Internet as a platform for customer engagement in product innovation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 19(4), 4–18.
Schreier, M., Oberhauser, S., & Prügl, R. (2007). Lead users and the adoption and diffusion of new products: Insights from two extreme sports communities. Marketing Letters, 18(1), 15–30.
Schreier, M., Fuchs, C., & Dahl, D. W. (2012). The innovation effect of user design: Exploring consumers’ innovation perceptions of firms selling products designed by users. Journal of Marketing, 76(5), 18–32.
Shi, M., & Wojnicki, A. C. (2014). Money talks…to online opinion leaders: What motivates opinion leaders to make social-network referrals? Journal of Advertising Research, 54(1), 81–91.
Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7(4), 422–445.
Srinivasan, S. S., Anderson, R., & Ponnavolu, K. (2002). Customer loyalty in e-commerce: An exploration of its antecedents and consequences. Journal of Retailing, 78(1), 41–50.
Tripp, C., Jensen, T., & Carlson, L. (1997). The effects of multiple product endorsements by celebrities on consumers’ attitudes and intentions. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(4), 535–547.
Urban, G. L., & von Hippel, E. (1988). Lead user analyses for the development of industrial products. Management Science, 34(5), 569–583.
van der Merwe, R., & van Heerden, G. (2009). Finding and utilizing opinion leaders: Social networks and the power of relationships. South African Journal of Business Management, 40(3), 65–77.
Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1–17.
Vernette, E., & Hamdi-Kidar, L. (2013). Co-creation with consumers: Who has the competence and wants to cooperate? International Journal of Market Research, 55(4), 2–20.
von Hippel, E. (1986). Lead users: A source of novel product concepts. Management Science, 32(7), 791–805.
von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Wa, K., & Yiyan, S. (2010). Understanding consumer-to-consumer interactions in virtual communities: The salience of reciprocity. Journal of Business Research, 63(9–10), 1033–1040.
Wikström, S. (1996). The customer as co-producer. European Journal of Marketing, 30(4), 6–19.
Zeithaml, V., Berry, L., & Parasuraman, A. (1996). The behavioral consequences of service quality. Journal of Management, 60(2), 31–46.
Zhao, X., Lynch, J. G., & Chen, Q. (2010). Reconsidering Baron and Kenny: Myths and truths about mediation analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(2), 197–206.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bru, M., Scaringella, L. (2018). Can Online Co-creation Influence Lead Users’ and Opinion Leaders’ Behaviors?. In: Ratten, V., Braga, V., Marques, C. (eds) Knowledge, Learning and Innovation . Contributions to Management Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59282-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59282-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59281-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59282-4
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)