Product Co-Design Considering Information Updating

Web 2.0 and the rise of social media ushered in a new era of user-generated content,where users can easily create and share information and actively participate in product design.The advancement of production and information technology has enabled enterprises to cost-effectively combine the specific preferences of customers in product design,and the willingness of enterprises to produce oriented to consumer demand has gradually increased,and the reverse customization model of JD.com has empowered enterprises,reducing product demand research time by 75%,shortening the new product launch cycle by 67%,and the price of most goods created by reverse customization is lower than that of similar products.Haier has gained new competitive advantages by building a "Shunguang" platform that allows consumers to participate in product design throughout the process.Collaborative design has received a lot of attention from academic research and business practice.However,the existing research has not fully clarified the motivation of consumers to participate in co-design,the research methods mainly focus on empirical analysis,and the analysis of the impact of co-design on corporate decision-making is not sufficient to comprehensively guide enterprise practice.This paper focuses on the impact of co-design on enterprise decision-making,clarifies the motivation and participation mechanism of consumers to participate in co-design,constructs an analytical model,enriches the research field of co-design,and provides guiding management suggestions for enterprises.First,co-design as an information update mechanism affects consumer purchases and corporate decisions.Specifically,consumers’ valuation of product quality cannot be observed in advance,and the valuation can be updated by participating in co-design,thereby influencing consumers’ purchase decisions,and enterprises observe the process of updating consumers’ product quality valuation information through co-design,and product design and pricing strategies are also adjusted.In addition,this paper considers the impact of co-design on consumer purchase and firm’s decision-making in the context of single product and dual product,and explores the possibility of co-design to achieve value co-creation.It is found that in the context of single low-end and dual-product production,codesign can always improve corporate profits,while in the context of single high-end product production,the benefits of co-design are related to the threshold of consumer participation in co-design,and when the degree of consumer participation is high,codesign can increase corporate profits.Secondly,co-design effectively eliminates product quality misreporting caused by information asymmetry,and co-design products will be more in line with consumer needs.Finally,whether co-design can improve the benefits of both enterprises and consumers,that is,realize value cocreation,is related to the production context of enterprises.Specifically,in the context of a single high-end product,there are boundary conditions for co-design to achieve value co-creation,while in the context of single low-end and dual-product production,co-design helps achieve value co-creation,which also reveals the essential reason why more and more enterprises are transforming to introduce co-design.