Research On The Relationship Among Supplier Power, Customer Participation, And Customer Value In B2B Markets

Due to customer’s role change from passive to active, customer participation is indispensable to successfully value co-creation. Current research of customer participation and value co-creation mostly concentrated in the B2C domain, less involved in B2B domain. In practice, under the background of the evolution of business ecosystem, B2B value co-creation becomes more and more important, and in urgent need of the corresponding theoretical guidance to better implement B2B value co-creation. Based on the above need of theory and practice, this paper focuses on the theme of B2B value co-creation, and take a typical supplier-customer relationship as the research object.This research has carried on the induction and deduction related to the theory of value co-creation, inter-organizational relationship, B2B power, and constructed a theory model of B2B value co-creation by power interaction. The model shows the supplier and the customer interactive relationship chain of bilateral power-bilateral participation bilateral capacity-bilateral value, and the cycle nature of value co-creation. To prove the rationality of the theoretical model, selected three key chain of the model and constructed empirical study on the corresponding research model. Based on376Chinese B2B enterprises survey data, three empirical studies and the results are as follows:First, the impact of customer participation on customer value. Customer participation can be defined as "the customer’s behavior of input a variety of resources to co-create value with partners ", it includes three dimensions as information sharing, responsibility behavior and interpersonal interaction. Customer value can be defined as " the part of value from co-creation value for customer", it includes product value and relationship value. This study conducted from the perspective of customers, structural equation analysis results indicate that each dimension of customer participation has a positive influence on the product value and relationship value.Second, study on the relationship among customer participation, supplier’s capacity and customer value. This study, as the succession of the above research, conducted from the perspective of suppliers-customer interaction, the results showed that supplier’s capability (including the innovation capability and marketing capability) plays an intermediary role in the relationship between customer participation and customer value. In addition, the market environment and the complexity of product plays a positive moderator role in the relationship between customer participation and supplier’s innovation capability. Third, study on the relationship among the supplier power, relationship commitment and customer participation. This study also is conducted from the perspective of suppliers-customer interaction, together with the above research constitute a complete relationship chain. This study draws on some research achievements of power-relationship commitment and channel power, and take an innovative research under the context of B2B value co-creation. According to the results of the survey data analysis, reference related literature and combined with the actual situation of China’s business environment, the study take new classification and name of power. With supplier power (soft power, neutral power and hard power) as the independent variable, relationship commitment (including calculative commitment and loyalty commitment) as intermediary variables, customer participation as the dependent variable, the study take a structural equation analysis, and discusses the moderator role of the asymmetry of power. According to the results of the study,"equal dialogue"," consensus first","carrot and stick"," put the shoe on the right foot ", the "careful use the law " are important power tactics to promote customer participation.Applied the above empirical study results to the model of B2B value co-creation by power interaction, the consequence shows the rationality of the model.In short, in the successfully value co-creation between the supplier and customer, the proper use of the supplier power can help customer participation behavior, customer participation is beneficial to increasing supplier’s capacity, stronger supplier’s capacity is beneficial to create more value for customer, with the enhancement of customer value, supplier’s own value also improved, supplier value ascension means supplier power ascension, it is a positive circulation process.This study integrated the theory and literature from value co-creation, inter-organizational relationship and B2B power, adapted the method combining standardized research and empirical research, aimed at enriching and developing the research of B2B value co-creation, and provided meaningful guidance for B2B enterprises to implement value co-creation practice together with its customers.