User experience sharing: Understanding customer initiation of value co creation in online communities
Purpose This paper aims to propose user experience sharing (UES) as a customer based initiation of value co creation pertaining to service provision, which represents customers' level of effort made for the direct benefit of others in their service network. The authors propose and empirically examine a user experience sharing model (UESM) that explicates customer to customer (C2C) UES and its impacts on firm desired customer based outcomes in online communities. Design/methodology/Approach Based on an extensive review, the authors conceptualize UES and UESM. By using online survey data collected from mobile app users in organic online communities, the authors performed structural equation modeling analyses by using AMOS 24. Findings The results support the proposed UESM, showing that C2C UES acts as a key driver of both firm desired customer efforts and customer insights. The results also confirmed that service dominant (S D) logic informed motivational drivers exert a significant impact on C2C UES. Importantly, C2C UES mediates the relationship between S D logic informed motivational drivers and firm desired customer based outcomes. Originality/value This study offers a pioneering attempt to develop an overarching concept, UES, which reflects customers' initiation of value co creation, and to empirically examine C2C UES. The empirical evidence supports the key contention that firms should proactively facilitate C2C UES.