Exploration of Engagement Mechanics During Value Co-creation Process: The Case of Gamification in a New Product Development Platform (Extended Abstract)

Academics and practitioners acknowledge the relevance to integrate customers in the development of new products or services in terms of innovation and relationship management (Bogers et al. 2010; Nishikawa et al. 2013; Roser et al. 2013). The emergence of online platforms, communities, and social networks has been widely recognized to facilitate the interactions and resource exchanges among actors (Sawhney et al. 2005; Zwass 2010). However, despite their important role, these technologies are not sufficient for an effective customers’ engagement. Engagement is considered as a key predictor of successful co-creation experiences (Brodie et al. 2011; Zheng et al. 2011). Despite the growing body of research on co-creation (Galvagno and Dalli 2014), little is known about mechanisms, practices, or tools that could be used to create and boost individuals’ engagement toward these co-creation platforms (Djelassi and Decoopman 2013; Ostrom et al. 2015). To address this gap, our research, based on complementary qualitative and quantitative methods, attempts to identify multiple users’ profiles and offers a more fine-grained understanding of the role of gamification in engaging these users on co-creation platforms. To this end, we identified multiple profiles and assessed their behavioral and emotional engagement on the platform.