Purpose
Customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction plays a significant role in service. The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers that motivate customers to interact with other customers, the interactions through which customers affect other customers and the value outcomes of C2C interactions for the participants.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a systematic literature review of C2C interactions. The authors analyzed 142 peer-reviewed articles to synthesize existing knowledge about C2C interactions. A generic value framework is used to categorize earlier research and reveal areas for further research.
Findings
The main outcome of this study is an integrative framework of C2C interaction that bridges C2C interactions and customer value. The findings indicate customer-, firm- and situation-induced drivers of C2C interactions. Outcome- and process-focused C2C interactions are identified to result in functional, emotional and social value outcomes. Avenues for additional research to explore issues related to current technology-saturated service settings are proposed.
Research limitations/implications
The paper proposes an agenda for future research to extend the C2C interaction research domain and explore how such interactions create value for the customer. The role of the service provider is not explicitly addressed but is an important area for further research.
Practical implications
Companies can use the framework to understand how they can become involved in and support beneficial C2C interaction.
Originality/value
This paper reviews empirical studies on C2C interaction, offering a systematic review of C2C interaction and producing an integrative framework of C2C interaction. It identifies a research agenda based on the framework and on topical issues within service research and practice.
The today's tendency to produce goods that are similar in terms of their quality, destined to satisfy the same customers' needs, have some unnecessary functions complicates consumers' choice, decreases their satisfaction. The aim of the paper is to investigate the Russian consumer preferences as the basis of the innovation product development besides company's competences. The Russian producers' and consumers' positions don't coincide in the evaluation of key factors for successful goods promotion at the consumer market (H1). It's our contention that participation of consumers in innovation product development brings it in correspondence with the consumer preferences thus ensures more success at consumer market. We believe that the most efficient forms of involvement of Russian consumers as innovation products 'co-manufacturers' are selfservice and conditions creation when the consumer could resolve a problem independently (H2). The object of the survey was two commodities (clothes and foodstuffs). Data was collected using a panel of 150 companies located in the Ural Federal District in Russia that developed more than 300 innovation products during the last ten years; some of them were developed with consumers' participation, some of them without it. 1200 consumers and 150 companies' representatives were interviewed by mean of a semi-structured questionnaire. Based on the collected database, the authors track some certain dependence between the consumers' participation in the value creation process and the innovation goods promotion to the consumer market. The findings indicate that consumers' participation in the innovation products development may be organised in different ways, and it significantly increases the sales volume (in 45% on average) and consumer satisfaction.
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