1. Introduction
As the social economy continues to develop and consumer demand undergoes constant advancement, the service industry is facing a growing trend towards personalization and diversification in consumer demand. This trend not only opens up new opportunities for service enterprises, but also poses significant challenges. Today’s world is a place where "service" is omnipresent, and the digitized “global village” is increasingly interconnected. It is the advancement of digital technology that is driving the globalization of services [
1]. In the past decade, service-dominant (S-D) logic has gained widespread acceptance [
2,
3,
4] and has formed core axioms [
3], and the current developmental trend is to make it a general theory for the development of marketing markets. Therefore, the development of new theoretical frameworks is needed: service exchange, resource integration, value co-creation, and concepts and theories related to institutions/ecosystems [
3]. With the rapid development of information technology and the widespread use of personal mobile terminals, customers are able to participate in the value creation process of service-oriented enterprises through various interactive channels, including various high-quality service platforms, and to achieve common production and creation with enterprises. Advanced digital technology also provides information and technical support for customer participation in value co-creation activities of service-oriented enterprises, further accelerating the interaction process between enterprises and customers and ultimately promoting customer participation in value co-creation. However, little is known about the reasons for customers’ voluntary participation in value co-creation activities in a digital background [
5]. Therefore, it is necessary and urgent to study the mechanism of how customer participation continuously affect the value co-creation of service-oriented enterprises through the service quality of service platforms and the application of digital technology in the context of digitalization.
Service innovation primarily encompasses three key architectures: the service ecosystem, which offers an organizational framework for participants to offer services and collaboratively create value; the service platform, which brings about innovation by fluidifying resources, thereby enhancing resource efficiency and concentration, making it convenient to access suitable resource bundles for service exchange; and value co-creation, which views value as the outcome of the integrated resources jointly created by service providers and beneficiaries [
6]. For service-oriented enterprises, a service platform is an important bridge connecting consumers and enterprises during the service process, and its real-time sharing of information, high service efficiency, and strong responsiveness widely influence customers’ willingness and behavior to participate in value co-creation. This study will explore the mediating role of platform service quality and understand the role and mechanism of service platforms. The advent of the digital economy era has accelerated the reshaping of the overall value chain of enterprises through digitization and intelligent technology, while the existing research on the impact mechanism of digital technology on customer customization is still insufficient [
7]. With the continuous advancement of the digitization process, enterprises can also integrate data and information from various links through building digital platforms, use customers as a source of information to understand future consumer trends, and thus accurately grasp the differentiated value demands of customers in the digital era to achieve more groundbreaking value addition [
8]. This study will further verify the regulatory role of digital technology in the customer participation and value co-creation of service-oriented enterprises, and explore the unique mechanism of the role of customer customization in enterprise innovation and value co-creation in the digital era.
6. Discussion and Conclusions
This study takes service-oriented enterprises as the research object and conducts an in-depth exploratory study on the internal influence mechanism of customer participation in co-creating value based on service innovation, service quality theory, and value co-creation. The main conclusions drawn are as follows: (1) Service-oriented enterprises can transform customers into cooperative partners who win together with the service-oriented enterprise through three paradigms of customer participation, continuously empowering the growth and development of the service-oriented enterprise through the process of value co-creation. This finding supports prior studies [
6]. (2) The platform service quality of service platforms during customer participation in value co-creation can enhance customers’ satisfaction with the enterprise and promote customers’ positive willingness to participate in value co-creation when customers have a better understanding of the basic information of products or services. Prior studies has shown that customers by maintaining a good interactive service platform, to improve the customer participation intention [
17,
42]. This is consistent with the results of our study. (3) The degree of application of digital technology can positively regulate the impact relationship between customer participation and value co-creation with service-oriented enterprises. Digital technology to increase the efficiency of the service platform and information collected by intelligent processing ability, etc., so as to promote value co-creation of all parties [
46,
55,
56,
57].
6.1. Theoretical Contributions
(1) This study has constructed a theoretical model of customer participation influencing the value co-creation of service-oriented enterprises in the digital era. Based on the service quality theory, value co-creation theory, and relevant research results, a theoretical model of the influence of customer participation on value co-creation from the perspective of the enterprise is constructed, breaking through the previous research limitations that focused more on the consumer perspective. At the same time, with the platform service quality as the mediating variable, the mediating path of customer participation in value co-creation is determined. By introducing digital technology as a moderating variable in the era of digital economy, it strengthens the research and practice of digital service innovation, showing some degree of innovation in model construction.
(2) This study has revealed the role of customer participation in value co-creation for service-oriented enterprises in the digital era. Building upon previous research, this study analyzes three paradigms of customer participation, categorizing them into the dimensions of information provision, co-development, and co-marketing. It further expands on how customer participation in the digital context influences the mechanisms of value co-creation and service innovation for service-oriented enterprises, enhancing the understanding of the impact of digital technology on service innovation and enriching the S-D logic theory.
6.2. Managerial Implications
The conclusions of this study have the following managerial implications for service-oriented enterprises:
First, service-oriented enterprises should focus on effectively managing the three paradigms of customer participation. In the future, enterprises should engage with customers in a meaningful way through multiple levels such as ideology, strategy, and technology, establishing diverse and long-term relationships to influence customer behavior and further enhance the spontaneity of customer participation. Additionally, they can consider implementing corresponding reward measures to create incentive factors for more customers to actively participate in the entire process of service production and delivery. Furthermore, differentiated incentive measures should be implemented based on different forms or processes of customer participation to encourage more customers to actively co-create value with the enterprise using their information, capabilities, social resources, and other means. By meeting the personalized needs of customers, customer customization can better utilize resources, reduce waste, and thus reduce the impact on the environment, further promoting sustainable development.
Second, service-oriented enterprises should pay attention to providing good support mechanisms for customer participation in the value co-creation process. The service-oriented enterprises need to regularly adjust the service platforms they build, first by optimizing the interface interaction and design of the service platform operating end, with a greater emphasis on the convenience of platform use. Then, they should adopt appropriate flexible reward mechanisms such as a points redemption system to encourage customers to more comprehensively and objectively describe their experiences from multiple perspectives. Finally, they should establish an effective evaluation response mechanism to increase employees’ awareness of customer service, prompt employees to promptly view, respond to, provide feedback on, and address customer needs on the service platform, making it a good communication support mechanism.
Lastly, digital technology is an important determining factor in promoting sustainable development of enterprises, service-oriented businesses should promote and actively implement the digital technology application of the enterprise. In the future, these businesses need to pay more attention to and increase investment in the development of digital technology, establish departments related to digital technology, and create a mechanism for the cultivation of professional talents. At the same time, they should strengthen the deep integration of digital technology with the business operation mode, actively combine emerging technologies such as big data and cloud computing to create more opportunities for customers to participate in the value co-creation process, obtain sustainable profit points in line with customer needs, better tap into customer potential, and monetize potential data resources into the actual economic benefits and innovative value enhancement of the enterprise.
6.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions
The current study has some limitations. First, the scope of investigation and research should be further expanded and sample data should be increased. For example, the research object should not only be limited to the managers of enterprises, but also consider including customers in the scope of research, and improve the multi-angle value co-creation research. Future studies should aim for a more balanced and representative sample. The second is to introduce other variables for more in-depth study. The conceptual model of this study introduces the service quality of the service platform and digital technology as the mediating and regulating variables, respectively. Future research may consider more in-depth exploration from the aspects of customer diversity, such as user characteristics, leading customer orientation, and organizational level, such as platform capabilities. The third is to expand the research perspective. Future research perspectives can consider measuring customer participation and value co-creation from the two levels of enterprises and customers, respectively, and try to add more situations into the research for cross-regional and cross-cultural comparative analysis.