Co-creation under complex products : the impact of observing consumers’ expertise and perceived consumers’ similarity on the perceived innovation ability of companies

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Tiago Leite de Matos Braga
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29008
• topic: Co-creation under complex products; Expertise; Perceived similarity; Cocriação sob produtos complexos; Expertise; Similaridade; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Companies have been increasingly involving consumers in their innovation process to grasp the consumers needs in a superior way. Research acknowledges this joint creation of value involving consumers and company professionals as being beneficial for both the firm and the consumers. Despite that, for consumers that are not involved in the innovation process, usually mentioned as observing consumers, there are some conditions under which this innovation process is not beneficial. Complex products, for example, is one of the cases in which research shows that involving consumers in the innovation process is not beneficial, due to observing consumers being sceptic of the expertise of other users, which consequently damages their perceptions of the co-creators to provide meaningful inputs. In this study we explore if characteristics such as the observing consumers expertise and his perceived similarity with the co-creator enable this innovation process to be beneficial even under complex products. First, our study suggests that if a firm provides additional information that validates the co-creators’ expertise then, consumers perceive firms that design with students higher in terms of innovation ability when compared with company professionals. Secondly, our study suggests that when consumers are provided with additional information regarding the co-creators’ expertise and they feel similar to the creator, the innovation ability of the firm is positively affected. This paper adds to existing literature on co-creation under complex products and shows that there are specific conditions in which this innovation process is beneficial under complex products.