Why and When Consumers Prefer Products of User-Driven Firms: A Social Identification Account

Author(s)
Darren Dahl, Christoph Fuchs, Martin Schreier
Abstract

Companies are increasingly drawing on their user communities to generate promising ideas for new products, which are then marketed as "user-designed" products to the broader consumer market. We demonstrate that nonparticipating, observing consumers prefer to buy from user- rather than designer-driven firms because of an enhanced identification with the firm that has adopted this user-driven philosophy. Three experimental studies validate a newly proposed social identification account underlying this effect. Because consumers are also users, their social identities connect to the user-designers, and they feel empowerment by vicariously being involved in the design process. This formed connection leads to preference for the firm's products. Importantly, this social identification account also effectively predicts when the effect does not materialize. First, we find that if consumers feel dissimilar to participating users, the effects are attenuated. We demonstrate that this happens when the community differs from consumers along important demographics (i.e., gender) or when consumers are nonexperts in the focal domain (i.e., they feel that they do not belong to the social group of participating users). Second, the effects are attenuated if the user-driven firm is only selectively rather than fully open to participation from all users (observing consumers do not feel socially included). These findings advance the emerging theory on user involvement and offer practical implications for firms interested in pursuing a user-driven philosophy.

Organisation(s)
External organisation(s)
University of British Columbia (UBC), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (WU)
Journal
Management Science
Volume
61
Pages
1978-1988
No. of pages
11
ISSN
0025-1909
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1999
Publication date
08-2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502019 Marketing
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Strategy and Management, Management Science and Operations Research
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/1928c368-5203-462e-9ec5-cb5f8a5e860b