Customer value co-creation and new service evaluation: the moderating role of outcome quality

This study aims to examine how the degree of value co-creation affects Chinese customers’ evaluations of new tourism and hospitality services, and how the outcome quality moderates this relationship under different conditions.

The proposed hypotheses are tested using a self-reporting questionnaire-based survey and two experimental designs. Data analysis entailed hierarchical multiple regression analysis, a simple slope test and a two-way ANOVA.

Three component studies assessed boundary conditions for the positive effects of the degree of value co-creation on customers’ evaluations of new services. Studies 1 and 2 indicated that unequivocal high-quality outcomes amplified positive effects, which were reversed by unequivocal low-quality outcomes. Study 3 demonstrated that in Chinese contexts of ambiguous outcomes, the relationship between the degree of co-creation and new service evaluation was positively mediated by self-integration in private contexts and negatively mediated by loss of face in public contexts.

This study identifies critical factors influencing successful service innovation in China within different contexts. Its finding of context-dependent customer engagement in value co-creation has managerial implications for facilitating favorable new service evaluations.

This exploratory study addresses a research gap regarding service innovation, offering insights into positive and negative influences of customer value co-creation on new service evaluation, under different outcome quality conditions in the domestic Chinese hospitality and tourism sector.