The double-edged sword of customer participation on new product development performance: the contingent roles of relational and environmental factors

Jiaxin Lin, Jason Lu Jin, Liwen Wang and Xueqing Wang

Industry and Innovation, 2025, vol. 32, issue 3, 339-382

Abstract: Although customer participation plays an increasingly important role in firm innovation, both its effects on new product development (NPD) performance in the B2B context and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear in the extant literature. Building on the boundary spanning theory, we investigate the double-edged effects of customer participation on NPD performance by explicating the mediating roles of knowledge sharing and customer – developer conflict. Based on a sample of 167 high-tech firms in China, our findings indicate that customer participation can improve NPD performance through knowledge sharing but decrease NPD performance by exacerbating the conflict between the developer firm and its customer. Furthermore, previous cooperation experience attenuates the effects of customer participation on knowledge sharing and customer – developer conflict, whereas technological turbulence strengthens the effect of customer participation on knowledge sharing. Our findings offer important implications for both innovation research and practice.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2024.2384428

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