Firms’ Co-Creation and Innovation by Toolkits Usage: The Mediating Role of Relationship Quality

In the modern business world, firms gain enormous success in innovation by involving customers in the innovation process. This approach ostensibly reduces firms’ cost by decreasing reliance on internal research and development. Organizations often use knowledge from customers via toolkits usage to fulfill customer’s need. Fulfilling customer needs through customer involvement in product innovation process via toolkits usage has seen favorable outcomes for the organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine the impact of toolkits usage on co-creation and innovation, respectively. Additionally, this study aims investigate the mediating role of relationship quality between predictor and criterion variables. This study includes a survey of 393 manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Results confirm that toolkits usage is positively associated with innovation and relationship quality. Further, the results provide evidence that relationship quality plays a mediating role on the relationship between toolkits usage and criterion variables. The results assert important implications for practitioners wanting to reap benefits from individualized products through toolkits usage. In sum, manufacturers can garner value from toolkits usage within the context of an emerging economy, like Malaysia.