The Factors Influencing Customer Co-Creation

Abstract:  In today's business, organizations are working with external stakeholders to develop a better product. Customers are one such stakeholder with whom organizations collaborate to develop a product fulfilling their needs. This process of Co-Creation facilitates organizations to get closer to their customers. Also in the study made in the year 2016 for the 19th annual global CEO survey, 90% of the CEOs have claimed Customers to be their main priorities. Further in the literature has also debated the process of customer co-creation being complex and studies have been made to understand the Ups and Downs of the process. Problem Background: Based on the opportunity in the field of Co-Creation growing rapidly and literature arguing on both Success and failure of the process, we in our thesis aim to address the gap of identifying the factors that influence the Customer Co-Creation Process. The Purpose of our thesis was to Identify the Factors for Organizations that Influence the process and suggest to imply those factors during the process of Co-Creation for a better result.  To answer our research question we chose a qualitative approach by interviewing a total of 5 members from different organizations and different businesses in a semi-structured interview format. We chose to do research from both Customer and Organizational perspective, we formed 2 cases out of the 4 interviews and one as an expert in the field of New Product Development. The main findings of our research shows 6 Main Influencing Factors and 12 Sub Factors within 6 main factors that enrich the process of co-creation. The factors are Communication (Feedback & Highlighting the need to Customer), Management (Environment, Relationship Management, Flexibility /Exploratory, Leadership, Rewards/Incentives, Selection of Customer), Transparency, Commitment & Trust (Secrecy Concern, Sharing of IP), Consistency, Training (Employee and Customer). Our research shows the factors on the application during the co-creation process can influence the process to a better output. We have suggested the organizations in our Organizational Implications on how these factors can influence the process to a better output. Thus, answering our research question.