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Service innovation is a key source of competence for service enterprises. Along with the emergence of crowdsourcing platforms, consumers are frequently involved in the process of service innovation. In this paper, the authors describe the crowdsourcing ideation website—MyStarbucksIdea.com—and find the motivations of customer-involved service innovation.

Using a rich data set obtained from the website MyStarbucksIdea.com, a dynamic structural model is proposed to illuminate the learning process of consumers.

The results indicate that initially individuals tend to underestimate the costs of the firm for implementing their ideas but overestimate the value of their ideas. By observing peer votes and feedbacks, individuals gradually learn about the true value of ideas, as well as the cost structure of the firm. Overall, the authors find that the cumulative feedback rate and the average potential of ideas will first increase and then decline.

First, the previous researches concerning the crowdsourcing show that the creative implementation rate is low and the number of creative ideas decreases, and few scholars have studied the causes behind the problems. Second, the data used in this paper are true and valid, and it is difficult to obtain now. These data can provide strong empirical support for the model proposed in this paper. Third, it is relatively novel to combine the customer learning mechanism and heterogeneity theory to explain the phenomenon of reduced creativity and low implementation rate in crowdsourcing platform, and the research results can provide a reasonable reference for the construction of this industry.