User Behaviors, Roles, and Contributions in Product Co-Innovation Community
Qing Shan Zheng, Guofu Ding, Rong Li, Haizhu Zhang · 2021
Product co-innovation community is increasingly used by firms to involve customers and leverage user knowledge for products and services innovation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate: what users do, what their roles are, and what they contribute to the co-innovation. This paper investigates user behaviors with netnography, a qualitative methodology which adapts ethnographic research techniques to study online community. The research setting is a typical product co-innovation project in an international community. The results reveal that: User participation, both creation and interaction behaviors, is characterized by core-periphery model. Only a small number of active individuals are valuable contributors; Users act as six different roles; Correspondingly, users make various contributions not only in forms but also in quality. This study provides community managers a comprehensive and workable way to grasp user behaviors. Besides, it suggests managerial guidance for community practitioners on improving design efficiency and participation convenience and effectiveness. It contributes to a theoretical understanding of user performance in the product co-innovation community and expands the research in online community.