African Journal of
Business Management

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Bus. Manage.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1993-8233
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJBM
  • Start Year: 2007
  • Published Articles: 4193

Full Length Research Paper

Empirical research of the relationship between customer participation, customer satisfaction and service innovation performance in China

Zhang Hongqi* and Lu Ruoyu
School of Management and Economics of UESTC, Chengdu, China.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 20 October 2011
  •  Published: 01 February 2012

Abstract

Customer participation has received considerable attention in service organizations. To examine the relationship between customer participation, customer satisfaction and service innovation performance, this paper logically discriminated the relevant concepts of them, put forward four assumptions. Through 278 valid questionnaires, confirmatory factor analyses, correlation analyses, structural equation modeling analyses were carried out to select the model and test the hypotheses. The results of the study indicate that customer participation has significantly positive impact on customer satisfaction and service innovation performance. And customer satisfaction has significantly positive impact on service innovation performance. Implications for practicing managers and for future research are discussed. The results of these studies not only support the practice of service innovation activities, but also provide a good research perspective and bases for follow-up research.

 

Key words: Customer participation, service innovation performance, customersatisfaction.