An exploratory investigation of the effects of co-production and co-consumption on the characteristics and adoption of service innovations: the customer's perspective.

Customers play an active role throughout the marketing process. This dissertation concerns itself with customer's co-creation of value for self (co-production) and for other customers (co-consumption) during service production and delivery. With the servuction system as its overarching framework, this study explains how changes in the customer's perceived co-production and co-consumption, caused by a service innovation, influence her perceptions of service innovation characteristics and modify her adoption behavior. It draws on a multidisciplinary body of knowledge and develops a conceptual framework and a set of substantive propositions. The empirical research was contextualized in three services: self check-out at grocery stores, Build-A-Bear stores, and meal assembly centers. It focused on members of Generations X and Y who were familiar with these services. The qualitative investigations and pilot study helped adapt the extant scales and construct new scales. In line with prior works, the focal service encounters were simulated through a series of consumption scenarios. The exploratory factor analysis in the pilot study and the confirmatory factor analysis in the main study indicated that the instruments were culturally informed, internally reliable, and construct-wise valid. The results indicate that co-production and co-consumption play important roles in explaining innovation characteristics and adoption decisions. More specifically, the focal customer's co-production of the service for self (CPS), other customers' co-production of the service for the focal customer (OCP), the number and the nature of other customers (crowding and homophily) can help to explain the focal customer's evaluation of service innovation characteristics as well as her adoption decision. The focal customer's disposition to participate (DTP) and its interaction with CPS are also useful explanatory constructs. Focal customer's co-production of the service for other customers (CPO) and its interaction with DTP emerged as non-significant. In comparing the high- and low-DTP groups, it was found that the former was more convenience-prone in two service contexts, and the latter in the third context.