Customer Interaction and Innovation in Hybrid Offerings

Abstract

Hybrid offerings are bundles of goods and services offerings provided by the same firm. Bundling value offerings affects how firms innovate, interact with customers, and customize their goods and services. However, it remains unclear how customer interaction might drive the innovation performance of various bundled components. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of customer interactions and service customization on both goods and services innovations in a hybrid offering context, using a unique data set of 146 information technology and manufacturing firms. Customer interaction appears beneficial to both goods and services innovation in a hybrid offerings context, but service customization has different direct effects on goods versus services innovation. As a potential mediator, customer knowledge mobilization resources exert different effects on the goods and services elements of hybrid offerings. Furthermore, for high-interaction customers, medium levels of technical modularity lead to most favorable innovation outcomes for services innovation. The results thus suggest that providers of hybrid offerings should foster customer interactions, to drive the innovation performance of the good and service components, while still making sure to implement service customization strategies. These findings have notable implications for service innovation research.

Customer Cooperation and Employee Innovation Behavior: The Roles of Creative Role Identity and Innovation Climates

“…Following this logic, employee innovation behavior not only relies on an individuals' information and skills, but also on outside resources and capital. This means employees need to seek help from outside of company structures-for example from customers to access resources and information useful to innovation (Foss et al, 2011;Schaarschmidt et al, 2018). Customer behaviors have been seen as important antecedents to employee innovative behavior.…”

Antecedents of Knowledge Acquisition in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

“…In furtherance to that innovation, quality has an impact on new service market performance. In a related work by Schaarschmidt & Walsh, (2018) which focused on customer interaction in the B2B business, using a unique data set of 146 information technology and manufacturing firms, an interview was conducted which revealed that customer interaction appears beneficial to both goods and services innovation in a hybrid offerings context. The ongoing discussions lead the study to hypothesize that:…”

Customer interaction in business relations: a meta-analysis approach

“…Customer interaction has been understood as the different forms of information exchange, collaboration and cooperation that occur between a company and its customers, it is a continuous value generator for organizations (Gruner and Homburg, 2000). Customer interaction is directly associated with the mechanisms firms use to innovate, interact with customers and customize their goods and services (Schaarschmidt et al , 2018). It has therefore been suggested that this concept has become a new marketing paradigm (Storbacka et al , 1994).…”

“…However, the impacts of customer interaction at the firm level can be different forms of information exchange, collaboration and cooperation, rather than a simple relationship between consumers and businesses. For customer interaction generate strong results, the company must create mechanisms that continuously support the interaction and make the customization of their goods and services possible (Schaarschmidt et al , 2018).…”

“…Due to its social and economic relevance, the analysis of customer interaction continues to attract academic interest (Dong and Sivakumar, 2017; Schaarschmidt et al , 2018). In this regard, concepts such as cocreation, coproduction and customer engagement are central themes of research that has sought to identify the factors associated with customer interaction that motivate (such as technology anxiety, the need for interaction, the threat and usefulness of technology, shared vision and interactivity), moderate (such as customer readiness and innovation orientation) and produce results (such as customer satisfaction, behavioral intention, willingness to pay, perceived value and behavioral intention).…”