Customer knowledge sharing, creativity and value co-creation: A triad model of hotels, corporate sales employees and their customers

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to improve understanding of co-creation by focusing on customer knowledge sharing (CKS), which is something that can be influenced by organizational relationship orientation (ORO), employee adaptiveness (EA) and customer expertise (CE), and that influences employee creativity (EC) and customer-perceived economic value (CEV).

Design/methodology/approach

With subjects being conference and meeting organizers for hotel service, a survey was conducted in major Chinese cities. In the survey, high-star-rated hotels’ corporate sales personnel provided data if a sales person got one of their customers to provide data. Only responses for hotels for which two employee–customer matched records were obtained could be used for analysis by using hierarchical linear modeling; so, 217 matched records from 48 hotels were processed.

Findings

Accepting five hypotheses and having coefficients for control variables allow new insights into the importance of CKS. Insights regarding brand familiarity, employee seniority, etc. contribute to theory and improving research.

Practical implications

Action can include fostering benefit from CE, nurturing EA and supporting ORO. Action can be recruiting and training employees with special considerations to their level and use of EA that facilitates acquiring valuable knowledge from customers. For researchers, practical implications relate to improving modeling and recognizing new research.

Originality/value

This study provides new findings on ORO, EA and CE affecting CKS, as well as showing relationships of CKS with EC and CEV. Coefficients of control variables yield insights beyond control that contribute to theory and to identifying new research. Examining response distributions highlights analysis issues, suggesting avenues for new research.

Citation

Guan, X.-H., Xie, L. and Huan, T.-C. (2018), "Customer knowledge sharing, creativity and value co-creation: A triad model of hotels, corporate sales employees and their customers", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 961-979. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-09-2016-0539