The Impact Of Customer Participation On Employee Innovative Behavior In The Service Industry

With the change of marketing dominant logic and the emergence of the notion of value co-creation,the meaning of customer participation has gradually enriched,and more and more scholars have paid attention to customer participation and its value outcomes.Some scholars have proposed that customer participation can promote employee innovative behavior,but there are few related studies,and most of the studies are at the stage of theoretical discussion,lacking of stable empirical research results.In fact,the impact of customer participation on employee innovative behavior depends on how employees process and analyze the social information brought by customer participation.Specifically,employees receive the social information derived from customer participation at first,then they process and analyze the information,and finally they adjust their behaviors,including whether they choose innovative behavior or not.Obviously,the process is influenced by the individual differences among employees.Therefore,based on the theory of social information processing,the author proposes to measure and verify the impact of customer participation on employee innovative behavior from the perspective of employees,and to explore the moderating effects of needs for achievement,power and affiliation separately on the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior.According to the research question,this study adopted the method of questionnaire survey,taking the employees who have direct contact with customers in the service industry as samples,and collected 144 valid questionnaires covering finance,consulting,design and other service industries.After collecting the questionnaires,this study mainly used SPSS20.0 software to conduct a series of analyses,including reliability and validity test of the scales,variable descriptive statistical analysis,hierarchical regression analysis and simple slope test.The results show that:(1)Customer participation has a significant positive effect on employee innovative behavior.(2)Need for achievement significantly positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior.(3)Need for power significantly negatively moderates the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior.(4)Need for affiliation significantly positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behaviorIn theory,this study not only enriches the empirical research results of the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior in the context of China's service industry,but also enriches the understanding of the relationship between customer participation and employee innovative behavior based on a new theoretical perspective,considering the impact of individual differences among employees.In practice,the conclusions of this study suggest that managers should pay more attention to the individual differences among employees like individual needs.In addition,the conclusions provide new inspiration and reference for enterprises,especially those in the service industry,on how to promote employee innovative behavior.