Customer co-creation and adoption intention towards newly developed services: an empirical study

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to empirically examine and explain the antecedent factors of consumers’ adoption intention toward co-creatively developed new travel services using smart phone apps. The antecedents include consumer innovativeness, trust, degree of co-creation that results in positive adoption intention. In this study, tourists’ degree of co-creation acts as a mediator between trust and adoption intention. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through online surveys from tourists that resulted into a total of 152 valid responses. An analysis of data was done by applying the confirmatory factor analysis along with structural equation modeling. Findings The findings of this study indicate that both consumer innovativeness and trust significantly affect adoption intention directly and indirectly via degree of co-creation among tourists and e-travel service providers. Degree of co-creation acts as a mediator between the above-mentioned relationships. Research limitations/implications Use of smart phone apps by tourists’ and e-travel companies to co-create new services and tourists’ adoption intention have been examined in context of co-created service innovation that limits the generalizability of the results to other industries. A few other limitations are also discussed. Practical implications The findings of this study guides the policy planners and e-travel company managers toward application of mobile technology in consumer co-creation in context of service innovation. Originality/value Tourists’ trust in the e-travel companies and their innovativeness were found to influence their degree of co-creation, which are instrumental in developing adoption intention toward co-creative new service innovation using smart phone apps in India. This is a significant addition to the existing literature, as studies on co-creation activities aiming to co-develop new services by tourists and e-travel companies in India are scant in number. In addition to this, the newly developed conceptual model also highlights the role of degree of co-creation as a mediator between two antecedents (trust and innovativeness) and outcome (tourists’ adoption intention), which are considered as new additions to the co-creative service innovation literature.