Knowledge sharing among innovative customers in a virtual innovation community. The roles of psychological capital, material reward and reciprocal relationship

Published date11 September 2017
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2016-0226
Pages691-709
Date11 September 2017
AuthorDepeng Zhang,Fuli Zhang,Mengfei Lin,Helen S. Du
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management
Knowledge sharing among
innovative customers in a virtual
innovation community
The roles of psychological capital, material
reward and reciprocal relationship
Depeng Zhang, Fuli Zhang, Mengfei Lin and Helen S. Du
School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Abstract
Purpose Based upon social cognition and social exchange theories, the purpose of this paper is to develop
and test a conceptual model, suggesting that customer psychological capitals (CPCs) affect their knowledge
sharing behavior (KSB) within a virtual innovation community (VIC) under the influence of material reward
(MR) and reciprocal relationship (RR).
Design/methodology/approach The sample comprises of valid responses collected from 516 customers
in five virtual innovation communities via an online survey. The authors adopted the hierarchical regression
method to mitigate any concerns relating to endogeneity within the models, and also to test the relationships
among the variables.
Findings CPC, MR and RR are found to have a profound impact on their enthusiasm to share knowledge.
Environmental factors play an important role in shaping the effects of CPC on KSB. MR tends to weaken the
positive effect of CPC on KSB, whilst RR tends to strengthen the positive effect.
Practical implications To effectively manage a VIC, firms should make full use of the positive impact
of CPC on KSB, set up appropriate incentive mechanisms and create a virtuous community atmosphere to
encourage knowledge sharing.
Originality/value This study integrates two theoretical perspectives to examine which types of
psychological and environmental factors, and which combinations of these factors, affect innovative
customers to share knowledge. It offers useful guidelines for firms to engage in effective customer-driven
products, services and/or processes innovation.
Keywords Knowledge sharing behaviour, Customer psychological capital, Material reward,
Reciprocal relationship, Virtual innovation community
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In the rapidly developing information age, the generation, transfer and effective utilization
of knowledge is seen as the key to increasing competitiveness of firms. There are increasing
numbers of firms using knowledge management as a resource to gain an upper hand in
todays competitive business world. The current changes in the role of customers within a
market, shifts them from passive product recipients to the role of knowledge innovators in
the joint overall process of knowledge production and dissemination (Cui and Wu, 2015).
Customer participation not only helps firms to understand market demand (Laage-Hellman
et al., 2014) and to improve on new products, services and processes (Lynch et al., 2016),
but it also helps to provide firms with the opportunity to share innovation and knowledge
(Menguc et al., 2014). Having recognized the important knowledge value, increasing
numbers of firms are encouraging customers to participate in their product and/or service
innovation. For example, Sony Corporation sets up a test storewhere customers can
test the product prototypes and communicate their findings within the community; Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 5, 2017
pp. 691-709
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-08-2016-0226
Received 22 August 2016
Revised 19 January 2017
19 March 2017
Accepted 27 April 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71672044,
71172097 and 71572050); Philosophy and Social Science of Guangdong Province (No. GD16XGL22).
691
Knowledge
sharing among
innovative
customers
Microsoft, Google and other major corporations seek to promote the improvement and
innovation of their products by involving customers and through the establishment of a so
called virtual innovation community(VIC) within which customers can develop and share
their ideas and knowledge. By establishing this type of VICs, firms are essentially relying
upon customers to stimulate and develop products, services and/or processes innovation
(Bilgihan et al., 2016).
Although the economic benefits of customer-driven innovation have been recognized by
many firms, the current responses by online users within the VICs are characterized by low
participation rates and lack of valuable contributions (Wang and Haggerty, 2011).
Thus, the biggest challenge faced by many firmsin managing the knowledge and innovative
ideas possessed by their customers is how to stimulate these innovative customers
knowledge sharing behavior (KSB). Within the field of knowledge sharing research, several
theories have been applied to examine individualsKSB, but they mostly have focused on
exploring the main factors affecting the behavior of individuals from either within the
organization or that of ordinary customers, such as economic incentives (Lin and Lo, 2015;
Super et al., 2016), personal and social motivation (Wu et al., 2014; Tseng and Kuo, 2014 ;
Hsu, 2015; Linand Lo, 2015), and online platformtools (Chu and Kennedy, 2011).There is very
little discussion regarding the perspective of innovative customers and little evidence of
studies having explored the KSB from psychological, sociological and economic factors.
Yonggui and Junyi (2009) suggested that the key role of innovative customer as a knowledge
creator needs to be paid attention to. In contrary to ordinary customers, participation by
innovative customers tends to generate positive psychological capital, which drives innovative
customers to engage in behavior beyond that of the role of a customer, such as new ideas on
products/services, which is crucial to organizational development (Yonggui and Junyi, 2009).
Based upon the theories of social cognitionand social exchange, we empirically
analyzed factors promoting or hindering the KSB of innovative customers within a VIC
from psychological, sociological and economic levels. The theoretical significance of our
study lies in expanding the theoretical lens of the existing KSB to also include innovation
and knowledge generated by customers, whilst its practical significance lies in our aim of
providing a theoretical reference for firms to effectively manage VICs and to stimulate
customer-driven products, services and/or processes innovation.
2. Theoretical background
2.1 Innovative customers, VICs and KSB
Innovative customers, according to prior literature, actively participate in the process of
value co-creation, for instance in service marketing (Grönroos and Voima, 2013). They also
contribute in new products design, which can ultimately help firms to meet the changing
market demand (Cui and Wu, 2015). Hence, we define the term innovative customersas a
group participating in the product/service innovation activities of firms (including the
process of design, research, development, promotion); inputting intellectual, physical and
emotional effort, ultimately co-creating valuable outcomes for the firm. The important role
of innovative customers knowledge in the field of service/product innovation has attracted
the attention of scholars (Grönroos and Voima, 2013; Cui and Wu, 2015), but the important
factors that stimulate the innovative customers knowledge sharing have not been explored.
This paper aims to discuss this issue.
The rapid development of the internet has given rise to virtual communities.Incases
where firms use virtual communities to guide customers to participate in innovation and
communicate these customer generated product- or service-related innovative ideas within a
virtual community, then this virtual community can be referred to as a VIC (Di Gangi and
Wasko, 2009). Different from other types of virtualcommunity, VIC not only includes bulletin
board systems or message boards, but also some innovation modules (such as toolkits)
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