Co-creational Effects
En studie i betydelsen av varumärkets styrka
Consumer involvement in the product development process, co-creation, is being practiced by numerous companies. Previous research has investigated how consumer participation in co-creation affects consumer attitude. However, little is known about how co-creation affects the attitudes of the observervers of co-creation. The effect of observed co-creation on consumer attitude should be important when deciding whether to apply co-creation or not, as the observing consumers make up a larger part of the consumer collective than the participating consumers do. The paper at hand aims to investigate how observed co-creation affects consumer attitude and purchase intentions. Furthermore, the purpose of the paper is to test whether the effect of observed co-creation is influenced by the strength of the brand of the product. We conduct an experimental study where the independent variables, co-creation/no co-creation and strong brand/weak brand, are combined and matched with four groups of respondents. We find that observed co-creation has a positive effect on consumer attitude when the brand is strong, whereas when the brand is weak, consumer attitude is not affected by co-creation activities.