| In the era of open innovation,enterprises’ innovation activities have changed from closed to open.As an innovation mode of gathering all forces,"co-creation" has been applied to new product development practice,while the customer is undoubtedly an important "co-creator".The positive role of customer participation in new product development has been proved to be one of the important factors for the success of the new product.However,under the traditional offline environment,it is inevitable that the participation of customer groups is limited,so it is difficult for enterprises to excavate the potential of the customers as“co-creators".The rapid development of internet and information technology broke through the limitations of the traditional physical environment.Customer online participation based on internet is widely applied in enterprises’ new product development practice and creates great value for enterprises.Constructing and maintaining appropriate enterprise-customer online interactive model to integrate their knowledge and potential for knowledge co-creation,has become an important way to promote enterprises’ new product development performance.Customer participation in new product development has received wide attention from the theoretical and practical fields,and its positive effects on new product development performance have also been recognized by academic fields.But the indirect effects of customer participation in new product development to new product development performance is lack of enough attention,namely the "black box" of the mechanism of customer participation to new product development performance has not yet been completely open.The effect of enterprise-customer interaction under online situation on new product development performance needs more exploration.This study focuses on the elementary proposition "How does enterprise-customer online interaction improve new product development performance",constructs the theoretical framework of enterprise-customer online interaction—knowledge co-creation—new product performance,analyses the mechanism of enterprise-customer online interaction on new product development performance,explores the mediating role of knowledge co-creation,and reveals the internal mechanism process.Specifically,this paper attempts to explore the following issues step by step:①What is the connotation of enterprise-customer interaction?What are the dimensions of it?How to measure?②What is the mechanism of enterprise-customer online interaction on new product development performance?③What is the connotation and dimension of knowledge co-creation?④How does knowledge co-creation happen between enterprises and customers?What is the specific process mechanism?To solve the above problems,this paper firstly gives a literature review of the theories about customer participation in new product development,online customer participation in new product development and knowledge co-creation,and comb the theory vein related to this research framework;secondly through exploratory case study into four enterprises’ typical new product development projects,reveals the relationships among enterprise-customer online interaction,knowledge co-creation and new product development performance,preliminarily draw the research hypotheses.On this basis,this paper gives a deeper theoretical discussion combining with existing related literature,and put forward eleven hypotheses and the conceptual model;then through a questionnaire survey on 202 enterprises’ new product development projects,with the method of quantitative statistics as factor analysis,reliability and validity analysis,structural equation model analysis,the study carries out an empirical analysis of the theoretical model and hypotheses,and finally gets the conclusions about enterprise-customer online interaction and new product development performance.On the basis of analyzing the relationship model of the core variables,this paper further explores the process mechanism of enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation.After the analysis of the whole study,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)The connotation and dimension of enterprise-customer online interaction.Enterprise-customer online interaction,which can be divided into three dimensions as information oriented interaction,relationship oriented interaction and task oriented interaction,means the continuous communication and collaboration activities around the specific tasks of innovation carried out by the enterprise and the customer based on the internet and social media.Information oriented interaction is the activities that the enterprise and the customer share and exchange innovation information online.Relationship oriented interaction is the activities to establish lasting relationship between the two sides and meet the emotional needs.Task oriented interaction is the online cooperation around specific tasks carried out by the enterprise and the customer.(2)The influences of the different dimensions of the enterprise-customer online interaction on knowledge co-creation have a certain difference.Information oriented interaction,relationship oriented interaction and task oriented interaction all have significant positive effects on extraverted knowledge co-creation.Information oriented interaction and task oriented interaction both have significant positive effects on introverted knowledge co-creation,while the positive effect of relationship oriented interaction on introverted knowledge co-creation is not significant.It can be seen that information oriented interaction which focus on information sharing and exchange,and task oriented interaction around a specific innovation task,are the main ways of promote extraverted knowledge co-creation and introverted knowledge co-creation.(3)Knowledge co-creation has a significant positive effect on new product development performance.Enterprise-customer extraverted knowledge co-creation and introverted knowledge co-creation both have significant positive effects on new product development performance.Therefore,making full use of the internet virtual environment,to promote complementary knowledge and inspire each other through a variety of online interaction with customers,and to achieve enterprise-customer extraverted knowledge co-creation and introverted knowledge co-creation,is an important strategic choice for enterprises to enhance new product development performance.(4)The influences of the different dimensions of the enterprise-customer online interaction on new product development performance have a certain difference.Information oriented interaction and task oriented interaction both have significant direct positive effect on new product development performance;while the direct effect of relationship oriented interaction on new product development performance has not been effectively verified.Extroverted and introverted knowledge co-creation play partial mediating role between information oriented interaction and new product development performance,as well as between tasks oriented interaction and new product development performance.Relationship oriented interaction has an indirect positive effect on new product development performance,on account of the complete mediating role of extroverted knowledge co-creation.(5)Enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation process mechanism.Enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation refers to the process in which enterprises and customers construct and develop new knowledge,through mutual inspiration,induction and stimulation.It includes extraverted knowledge co-creation and introverted knowledge co-creation.Enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation should not only pay attention to the integration of customer knowledge so as to promote the enterprise’s knowledge creation,but also to emphasize customer integration and innovation of enterprise knowledge,highlighting the creation potential of customer.Throughout the full text,the innovation of this study is mainly reflected in the following four aspects:(1)Research on customer participation in new product development from the perspective of enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation.In this study,the situation of customer participation in new product development is extended from the substantive and one-way traditional offline customer participation to enterprise-customer online two-way interaction under the virtual environment,highlighting the mutual effects of enterprise and customer.This study breakthroughs the past research,changes the research of customer participation in new product development from "enterprise make use of customer knowledge"to "enterprise-customers co-create knowledge",and provides a new perspective for the related research area.(2)The concept and dimensions of enterprise-customer online interaction is clearly defined.The concept of enterprise-customer online interaction is refined and divided into three dimensions as information oriented interaction,relationship oriented interaction and task oriented interaction.The corresponding measurement scale is also developed.The study provides reference for further deeply carrying out of customer participation in new product development.(3)The model of the relationships among enterprise-customer online interaction,knowledge co-creation and new product development performance is constructed.From the new perspective of knowledge co-creation,this study researches deeply into the nature of enterprises and customers cooperation innovation,creatively constructs a theoretical model of enterprise-customer online interaction,knowledge co-creation and new product development performance through the explorative case study and literature review,and reveals the black box of the mechanism of enterprise-customer online interaction to knowledge co-creation and new product development performance through the questionnaire survey and large sample analysis.In this study,the theories of customer participation,knowledge management and new product development are systematically linked,and an important supplement and perfection to the theoretical research of customer participation in new product development has been done.(4)Put forward the construction of knowledge co-creation,and reveals the process mechanism of enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation.This study puts forward the basic concept of enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation,which is divided into two dimensions of extroverted knowledge co-creation and introverted knowledge co-creation.The measurement scale of knowledge co-creation is also developed.Further,the problem on how to realize the enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation is deeply studied.Through theoretical analysis and typical case study,the mechanism of enterprise-customer knowledge co-creation is revealed,providing the reference for the in-depth study of further research in related fields. |
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