It's All Your Fault! Attributing Blame for Co-Created New Product Failures in B2B Relationships

摘要

The literature exploring co-creation, the process of integrating customers in the new product development process, has grown rapidly in the last decade. The extant work has established co-creation as a powerful tool for both innovation and improving customer perceptions of the firm. While co-creation is widely used within B2B markets, there is little work exploring the use of co-creation within B2B channels. Additionally, while co-creation is touted as a positive interaction for business, there may also be negative relationship outcomes of co-creation in B2B relationships. This research takes a novel approach to B2B co-creation and investigates what happens when channel partners co-create a product together and the new product performs poorly in the marketplace. This conceptual study seeks to answer three main questions. First, what effect may failure of a co-created product have of B2B channel relationships? Second, how do channel partners assess blame for the product failure and what role does blame play in explaining negative relationship outcomes. Third, what characteristics of the relationship and what characteristics of the new product moderate the effect of product failure on B2B partnerships? This paper takes a conceptual approach and offers propositions regarding the effect of new product failure on B2B relationships.