The Impact of Customer Participation on Customer Value: Does Customer Resource and Regulatory Focus Matter?

Abstract

With the development of technology and the improvement of customer awareness, customers and enterprises are becoming more and more proactive in the process of cooperation. Among these developments is the value creation of customers in the brand network. The community changes with the accumulation of resources during the customer journey, and it is particularly important to explore the impact of customer resource accumulation and regulatory focus of enterprises for customers on customer value. Previous research mainly focused on the role of customer resources in the stages of value creation and value realization, ignoring the impact of customer participation on customer resources accumulation and customer value during the customer journey and the moderating effect of customer regulatory focus between them. This paper investigates this from the perspective of resource theory. Based on the investigation in 451 active customers in the Chinese famous brand network community, it uses the SEM method to test the relationships among customer participation, customer resources and customer value, and the moderating role of regulatory focus during the customer journey. The empirical results show that both customer relationship resources and human resources positively affect customer lifetime value and customer engagement value and play a mediating role between customer participation and customer value during the customer journey. Furthermore, the customer promotion focus positively moderates the relationships between customer participation and customer resources, while the prevention focus only positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and customer human resources. The research results provide a theoretical basis for brand network communities to sustainably cultivate and guide customers to contribute a higher value.