Customer participation, and green product innovation in SMEs: The mediating role of opportunity recognition and exploitation

Jiawen Chen and Linlin Liu

Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol. 119, issue C, 151-162

Abstract: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often face substantial pressure from their customers on issues of environmental sustainability but lack the resources and capabilities to offer innovative green products. To address this dilemma, we propose that customer participation can serve as a viable way of co-opting customer pressure and promoting green product innovation in SMEs. Drawing on the literature on stakeholder engagement and the entrepreneurship process, we suggest that customer participation enhances green product innovation by facilitating the recognition and exploitation of opportunities on the part of SMEs. An analysis of a dataset of 195 SMEs in China lends support to our hypotheses. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications for green product innovation and stakeholder management.

Keywords: Green product innovation; Customer participation; Opportunity recognition; Opportunity exploitation; Customer pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319303467
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:119:y:2020:i:c:p:151-162

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.05.033

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().