Enhancing peer-to-peer value co-creation with velocity of engagement

Abstract

This thesis introduces velocity of engagement as a new conceptual framework for customer engagement toward enhanced value co-creation in the peer-to-peer context. It aims to provide novel insights on customer volitional resource investment and explore its influence on engagement and subsequent co-creation. Velocity of engagement helps businesses better appreciate engagement drivers and manage the experiential manifestation of engagement. The research design consists of three parts, each corresponding to a research aim. The first part involves a conceptual study culminating in the new velocity of engagement framework. Informed by service-dominant logic and self-determination theory, this framework closes the gap in extant engagement literature that focusses less on intrinsically motivated engagement. The second part is an empirical study using Spotify Community for research sampling, to better understand the inducement of customer volitional resource investment and operationalise it through text mining and natural language processing techniques. This is the first known study to operationalise customer volitional resource investment by way of a typology in line with motivation theories. The third part is a separate empirical study using qualitative interviews with Spotify Community members to investigate co-creation viability. Learning from focal customers who benefit other customers on peer-to-peer platforms, businesses can better meet their strategic marketing goals of triggering, accelerating and redirecting co-creation. The results of the two empirical studies offer further support to the new conceptual framework for velocity of engagement and provide a better understanding of customer volitional resource investment for engagement at the micro-foundational level. The research findings also shed light on how businesses can leverage velocity of engagement for viable co-creation with managerial recommendations. This thesis contributes to engagement literature by highlighting the importance of micro-foundational engagement processes that have a significant bearing on subsequent co-creative engagement outcomes.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Tom CHEN (Supervisor) & Marjan ASLAN (Supervisor)