Antecedents and consequences of virtual customer co-creation behaviours

The purpose of this paper is to compare the antecedents and consequences of two distinct types of virtual co-creation behaviours that require different degree of effort from the customer, i.e. customer participation (CPB), and customer citizenship (CCB) behaviour, in a cross-cultural study.

A survey was conducted among members of online panels in the UK and Spain, reaching a sample of 800 online individuals who participate in online co-creation processes with fashion retailers. This design allows us to test the cross-cultural effects. Multi-group structural equations modelling was used to analyse the data.

Virtual co-creation behaviours are driven by perceived ease-of-use of the co-creation platform, electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) quality and fashion involvement; however, the effects are different on CPB, affected by perceived ease-of-use more strongly, and on CCB, driven by e-WOM quality and fashion involvement more strongly. Higher level of co-creation increases satisfaction with co-creation, which mediates the effect on engagement and intention of future co-creation. The cross-cultural design reveals that most relationships hold in both countries, with the exception of the influence of fashion involvement on CPB, while some differences in the size of the effects appear between countries.

This study contributes to increasing our knowledge on online co-creation in several ways. First, the authors investigate, in the online environment, two co-creation behaviours, CPB and CCB, and compare their antecedents. This paper provides a cross-cultural validation of the relationships between CPB and CCB’s antecedents and consequences, identifying the different effects due to culture.