This study aims to examine value cocreation in terms of interfirm collaborations between service firms, their business customers and business partners at different stages of a new service development (NSD) process.
The study develops and tests hypotheses that examine the roles played by business customers and partners in NSD, assuming resource dependency of the focal firm during three NSD stages (ideation, development and deployment). Empirical data were collected from 200 NSD projects and structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.
The results show that business customer collaboration has a positive effect on ideation performance and development performance, whereas business partner collaboration has a positive effect on deployment performance. These finding support the notion that the value cocreating roles of business customers and partners vary across NSD stages.
Future research should focus on how business partners can be actively involved in the NSD process and how the interests of different parties can be safeguarded. The use of longitudinal data will allow a better examination of the process dynamics.
The study provides managerial implications for service managers in terms of acquiring and allocating resources needed from business customers and partners during different NSD stages.
The study contributes to the growing literature on value cocreation in NSD by empirically demonstrating the respective performance contributions of business customers and partners during different stages of NSD. Moreover, the results also shed light on interfirm collaboration mechanisms from the perspective of resource dependence theory.
