Incentive mechanism for customer collaboration in product development: An exploratory study
Abstract: The purpose of this
paper provides some appropriate incentive factors for customers who
collaboration in product development, and analyzes the mechanism and degree of
these incentive factors influence on customer’s positivity and working efforts.
Design/methodology/approach: This paper first proposes the economic
incentives and non-economic incentives according to the characteristics of
customer collaborative product development. Then the firm and customer’s
objective function and constraints are determined based on their income and
costs that produce in the process of customer collaborative product
development. On this basis, this study then analyzes the relationship between
the incentive factors and customer’s positivity and working efforts.
Findings: The results show that: the fixed salary shows no motivational
effect but basic guarantee. The performance salary has more influence on
promoting customers’ efforts than the efforts of helping other customers. The
team share incentive affects both effort levels equally. The better spiritual
incentive, the higher firm’s effort level, the better innovative environment,
and the more motivate customer collaboration in product development.
Practical implications: The results of this paper can help firms to
understand the influence of different incentive factors, and offer them with
references to determine incentive factors and its degree.
Originality/value: This paper provides a comprehensive incentive mode,
which including economic incentive factors and non-economic incentive factors.
Moreover, the paper provides an insight on the relationship between these
incentive factors and customer’s positivity and working efforts.
Author: Chunguang Gu, Yang
Yang
Journal Code: jptindustrigg150105
