The Future of Innovation is Customer Co-Creation: A Critical Review
Saurav Kumar
ABSTRACT
Customer co-creation, where businesses collaborate with customers to jointly create products, services, or solutions, is a promising future strategy, offering benefits like increased innovation, customer loyalty, and deeper understanding of needs. Co-creation also means finding ways to include customers where they haven’t been invited in the past. The voice of the customer is “heard” in the process earlier than the typical process of waiting on survey results. Customers benefit from being included in ways that help them feel heard and part of the community. It’s great to actually reward customers for participating, too, through simple things like company swag or more complicated reward systems based on participation “points.” Customers often participate because they want to help create an experience they want, with a brand they already like.
Research Objective: This study delves into the intricate relationship between customers' willingness to co-create (WCC) and the required level of cocreation (LCC) for effective service innovation adoption. In response to recent findings suggesting a “co-creation sweet spot,” beyond which additional co-creation activities have detrimental effects, this research aims to provide both theoretical and empirical insights into this phenomenon.
