Virtual Customer Environments: IT-Enabled Customer Co-innovation and Value Co-creation - Information Technology and Product Development - page 113

proactive measures to create and sustain online environments that would contribute
toward such benefits.
Some of the empirical work on the VCE (e.g., Nambisan & Baron, 2009) have
also identified the key antecedents of these interaction-based customer benefits.
Specifically, the empirical work shows that the extent of product-related content
in customer interactions in the VCE impact - three of the four benefits - learning
benefits, social integrative benefits, and hedonic benefits. Similarly, the customer's
identity as a member in the community hosted by the VCE is also found to shape
both social integrative benefits and hedonic benefits. Finally, the degree of human
interactivity facilitated by the virtual environment (or the IT-based facilities in the
VCE) is found to impact social integrative benefits and hedonic benefits.
Thus, as shown in Fig. 6.1, attributes or characteristics related to customers'
interactions in the VCE shape the extent of the four types of benefits they derive
from such interactions and they in turn drive future participation and contribution.

Customer Benefits

￿ Cognitive or

learning benefits

Characteristics
of customersí
interactions in
VCE

Customer
participation
in VCE

￿ Personal integrative

benefits

￿ Social integrative

benefits

￿ Hedonic benefits

Fig. 6.1 Customer Interactions, Benefits, and Participation in VCEs

It is important to note here that much of the empirical work on VCEs so far
has involved customer participation in technology-based product and service con-
texts. Thus, future research may need to go beyond and validate the relevance and
impact of these different benefits in other types of product/service and industry
contexts.
The different benefits that customers derive are based on their interactions in the
VCEs. Closely related to these are then the nature of customer's co-innovation and
value co-creation experience in VCEs. As Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2003) note,
such customer experience in virtual environments can have potentially significant
implications for not just continued customer involvement but also customer loy-
alty and satisfaction. Next, we consider the theoretical dimensions of customers'
interactions experience in VCEs.

6.4 Customers' Interaction Experience in VCEs

Three fundamental contextual factors frame customers' interaction experience in the
VCE: product context, community context, and technology mediation (Nambisan,
2002). First, customer interactions in the VCE are primarily rooted in the context of