• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.82-98
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• 2023

This study investigates consumers' perceptions when customers participate in the process of innovating new products or new services essential to companies in the era of the 4th industrial revolution. Specifically, this study investigates how consumers' product evaluation varies depending on two types of innovation for a company's new product development (technology-based innovation and market-based innovation) and two customer roles (as information providers and as co-developers) participated in the development process. The research questions are as follows: As technology-based innovation and market-based innovation are different types of innovations, will consumers' product evaluation vary depending on these different types of innovation? If customers participate in the development process of a new product reflecting each innovation, how will the information that the customer participated be perceived by other consumers? In addition, this customer participation method can serve as an information provider and a co-developer, and will consumers' evaluation of new products vary depending on this role? As a result of verifying the hypothesis using an experimental method, it shows that consumers' product evaluation differs significantly depending on the role of customers who participated in the process of developing new product development process. In other words, the results indicate that the case where customers participated as market information providers in the process of developing new products is more favorable to the new product evaluation than the case where they participated as co-developers of the new products. In addition, there is an interaction effect between the type of product innovation and the role of customer participation. To be specific, when a product reflecting technological innovation is released, there is no difference in consumers' product evaluation according to the roles of two different customer participations. However, when a market-based innovation product is released, product evaluation is more favorably perceived when customers participated as information providers than they were involved in the new product development process as co-developers. This study is of theoretical significance in that it distinguishes each type of innovation and verified how other consumers' perceptions vary depending on their role when customers participate in the innovation process. Finally, limitations and future study directions are suggested along with practical implications.