Abstract
Consumers are increasingly expected to invest their own resources, time and energy into
co-creating value with service providers. Our study aims to investigate the motives that
drive consumer willingness to co-create by comparing the relative importance of six
motives across professional and generic services. Our results show that consumers asked
to co-create with a professional service firm are positively influenced by developmental
motives, and negatively by empowerment motives. In contrast, consumers asked to cocreate
with a generic service are driven by individualizing and relating motives. We
show how motives driving consumer willingness to co-create are influenced by
knowledge intensity and workforce professionalism. In addition we show the positive
impact of willingness to co-create on passive and active co-creation behaviours. We aim
to open the way for a more contextual understanding of value co-creation from a
consumer perspective.
