Customer involvement in the process innovation: Antecedents, mediation and performance

[[abstract]]The paper examines the importance of customer involvement for new process development in the Taiwanese manufacturing firms. The antecedents of customer involvement including competitor orientation, social network and internal coordination are investigated. Furthermore, the mediating effect of customer involvement between the antecedents and new process innovation performance is studied. The questionnaires are sent to 2,000 firms that are stratification sampled from a population of 33,844 Taiwanese firms with more than 10 employees. A dataset of 170 valid questionnaires is collected with an overall response rate of 9.7%. The results indicate that three antecedents are positively associated with customer involvement. Customer involvement significantly mediates the relationship between antecedents and new process performance. The paper concludes that the appropriate utilization of customer involvement is crucial to improve the new process innovation performance in manufacturing firms. Some managerial implications for creating appropriate organizational context and mechanisms of customer involvement are suggested