Designing with volition: examining the antecedents and outcomes of consumers’ perceived autonomy in co-production platforms
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The propensity of organisations to involve customers in their activities has increased with the proliferation of co-production platforms.Consumers want to play an active role in producing goods/services and to feel autonomous.Self-determination theory (SDT) states that autonomy is linked to well-being and is an innate need to experience oneself as the initiator and regulator of one's actions.Notwithstanding the importance of this need, there is little understanding of how organisations can support customers' experience of autonomy in co-production platforms.Using a mock co-production website where participants designed a t-shirt, a series of online experiments were conducted.It was found that providing action choices (vs option choices) in the activity, intrinsic (vs extrinsic) rationales to participate in the activity, and access to high (vs low) perspective-taking brand communities positively influences perceived autonomy.Further, intrinsic motivation and cognitive customer engagement mediate the relationship between perceived autonomy and desirable participation outcomes such as enjoyment, repeat participation intentions, willingness to pay and design quality.This is a first-of-a-kind study that extends SDT by demonstrating the different types of choice, rationales, degree/source of perspective-taking and their interactions and impact on consumers' perceived autonomy.The findings also provide specific guidelines for organisations to consider on how to enhance consumers' perceived autonomy while designing their co-production platforms for sustained participation.
Author: Triparna Gandhi
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Melbourne
OpenAlex ID: W2898477854