How do value co-creation activities relate to the perception of firms' innovativeness?

Value co-creation is an emerging marketing and innovation paradigm describing a broader opening of the firm to its customers by providing them with the opportunity to become active participants in the design and development of personalized products, services and experiences. It has a great potential in affecting the way firms operate and innovate and has, therefore, attracted the attention of both scholars and practitioners. However, there is not yet a fully satisfactory theoretical vision about its distinctive characteristics as compared to more traditional value creation approaches. The present paper provides empirical research results in answering two research questions. The first question is: What are the principal components of value co-creation? The second question is: What is the relationship between the degree of firms? involvement in value co-creation activities and the perception of their innovativeness. The paper starts with a review of the literature and a conceptual refinement of the value co-creation paradigm to continue with the identification of the key components of value co-creation based on a research methodology using web search and Principal Component Analysis techniques applied to data collected from a sample of 273 firms selected for being representative of the breadth of their value co-creation activities. The second part of the paper discusses the results from a linear regression analysis examining the relationship between firms? degree of involvement in value co-creation and the perception of their innovativeness. The analysis leads to research insights about the relevance of specific value co-creation components in terms of their innovation-related outcomes. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work discussing value co-creation implementation patterns based on the relationship between firms? involvement in value co-creation and the perception of innovativeness. JEL Codes: L1, L2, L17, O31