Co-Innovation: motivators and inhibitors for customers to participate in online co-creation processes

This study is concerned with identifying the motivators and deterrents of consumers to participate in co-creation processes. Co-creation processes are activities by firms to include consumers in the product development process in order to achieve a higher value through a better fit between need and product. Based on a literature review a model is developed, which is tested through an online questionnaire. The main motivators are oriented to U&G, uses and gratification, Antecedents found in existing research were used. U&G theory is a functionalist perspective on mass media communication which identifies several motivational factors. The survey results show that there are two clusters of co-creators, “motivated co-creators” and “not motivated co-creators”. These show four factors as main motivators, which are implications with the product, enjoyment, network with community and satisfaction and enrichment. However, it was also found that most respondents never participated in co-creation activities. This implies possibilities for management to advertise such activities in order to benefit from the customers’ knowledge, which needs further research in this area first, identifying more motivators with which the firms can gain the trust of costumers. The advertisement needs two strategies considering the two different groups of co-creators existing. “Motivated cocreators” put learning from the co-creation activities as their primary motivation. In contrast, “non-motivated cocreators” firstly seek the enjoyment out of such a participation.