Effects of Consumer Co-creation on Consumer Attitude: Moderating Roles of Consumer Motivation

Purpose – Many global companies across industries are paying significant attention to co-creation activities, which enable consumers to participate in firms’ value creation process, as a main model of new product development processes. In this study, we aim to examine different types of co-creation activities and their effects on consumer attitudes. We focus on upstream co-creation, downstream co-creation, autonomous co-creation, and sponsored co-creation. Upstream co-creation includes firms’ control and management in the initial stage of new product development and prototype testing. Downstream co-creation indicates that consumers participate in firms-initiative activities at a later stage in new product development, such as public relations and marketing communications. Autonomous co-creation includes consumers’ commitment activities in the absence of firms’ rewards. However, under the sponsored co-creation, consumers can return monetary and social rewards from firms through their co-creation activities. The hypotheses regarding the effect of co-creation on consumer attitudes are as follows. (H1, H2, H3, H4) Upstream, downward, autonomous, and sponsored co-creation has positive effects on consumer attitude. (H5, H6) As intrinsic motivation increases, the positive effect of upstream and autonomous co-creation increases. (H7, H8) As extrinsic motivation increases, the positive effect of downward and sponsored co-creation increases. Research design, data, and methodology – To achieve our research goals, we analyzed responses from 246 samples from Korean consumers and verified the proposed hypotheses using a linear regression model. The samples include Korean consumers who experienced upstream, downstream, autonomous, and sponsored co-creation by firms. Results – First, both upstream co-creation and downstream co-creation with firms and consumers are found to have positive effects on consumer attitudes. Second, autonomous co-creation and sponso