Virtual Customer Environments: IT-Enabled Customer Co-innovation and Value Co-creation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 106

experience may have implication beyond the virtual environment. Thus, another
important area for research relates to the development of a coherent theoretical
framework to analyze customer experience in VCEs and their impact on both online
and offline customer behavior.
Finally, while customer involvement in VCEs is important, to have considerable
impact on the success of product/service development it is clear that compa-
nies would need to incorporate complementary changes in its internal innovation
system and processes. This forms the fourth avenue for research in this area.
Specifically, what are the different types of complementary systems and processes
that would need to incorporated to ensure that companies are able to benefit
from VCEs?
Clearly, addressing all these questions will require drawing on concepts and
insights from multiple areas including marketing, organizational behavior, IT,
computer-mediated communication, and product development. This chapter empha-
sizes the need for such an inter-disciplinary focus in studies on VCEs and customer
co-innovation.
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. In the following section, I
examine the different customer co-innovation and value co-creation roles that VCEs
can support. Following that, I describe the theoretical frameworks that could inform
on the motivations for customers to participate in different innovation and value-
creation activities. Section 6.4 focuses on the concept of customer experience in
VCEs. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research issues related to the
impact of customer participation in VCEs is discussed.
6.2 Customer Roles in Virtual Customer Environments
In the strategic management and quality management literatures, studies have identi-
fied five roles for customers in value creation: as resource, as co-producer, as buyer,
as user, and as product (Finch, 1999; Gersuny & Rosengren, 1973; Kaulio, 1998;
Lengnick-Hall, 1996).
The first two customer roles are at the upstream or input side of organizational
activity, while the other three roles cluster at the downstream or output side of
the system. These roles extend to the customer co-innovation context in VCEs
too. Specifically, VCEs can be designed to support five different customer roles in
innovation and value co-creation: product conceptualizer, product designer, product
tester, product support specialist, and product marketer (see Table 6.1).
6.2.1 Product Conceptualizer or Ideator
Companies can encourage customers to interact among themselves to generate and
advance product improvement and new product ideas. Customers' role in idea gen-
eration or product conceptualization has been relatively well explored in marketing
and NPD literatures (e.g., Christensen, 1997; Leonard-Barton, 1995; Rothwell et al.,