Title: Customer motives and benefits for participating in online co-creation activities

Authors: Efthymios Constantinides; Leonine A. Brünink; Carlota Lorenzo-Romero

Addresses: Business Administration Department, School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands ' Business Administration Department, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands ' Marketing Department, University of Castilla La-Mancha, Plaza de la Universidad, 1, 02071 Albacete, Spain

Abstract: The widespread adoption of Web 2.0 applications, commonly known as social media, has brought about a new generation of empowered customers who are often willing to co-create by sharing their experiences, product knowledge and innovative ideas with producers. They provide inputs in the form of ideas, suggestions or testing in new product development trajectories. Co-creation with customers obliges businesses to step away from the traditional firm-centric view of innovation and presents marketers with interesting challenges: how to identify, motivate and recruit the most innovative customers in co-creation processes. A pilot questionnaire based on the uses and gratification approach identifies the motivators for customers to participate in online co-creation. The results indicate that customer participation in co-creation projects is motivated by four distinct types of benefits and also that co-creating customers differ in their motivational level. The paper also discusses ideas for follow-up studies and presents suggestions for further research.

Keywords: innovation; online co-creation; customer empowerment; social media; uses and gratification framework; online marketing; e-commerce; electronic commerce; internet marketing; customer motivation; new product development; NPD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2015.068346

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2015 Vol.9 No.1, pp.21 - 48

Received: 14 Jan 2014
Accepted: 15 Jul 2014
Published online: 31 Mar 2015 *

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