Web-based customer integration for product design: The role of hedonic vs utilitarian customer experience

Integrating customers into the innovation process is gaining popularity among companies as means of addressing competitive and market pressures. At the same time, companies are faced with the challenge of selecting appropriate customer integration methods to sustain customers' engagement and elicit contributions that are useful. We draw from previous research in consumer behaviour to identify customer experience as an important determinant of customers' overall participation in the design phase of the innovation process. Based on the compatibility principle, we propose a research model which examines the effect of a match between the type of product that customers are required to design, and the nature of customer experience (hedonic vs. utilitarian) they are provided with on their overall engagement with the customer integration process. A brief outline of the experimental study in which the proposed research model will be subsequently tested is presented. The aim of this research is to select and design appropriate web-based customer integration methods depending on the task that customers have to perform.