ABSTRACT
In recent years, products have become a source of experiences for customers (Pine & Gilmore, 1999), who are showing more interest in the intangible dimensions of what a firm has to offer. Customers conceive and purchase products for their relational use or for the meanings attached to the products by means of brands (Holt, 2002), for their aesthetic content like design (Verganti, 2009), as well as the social dimension of their use, for instance, within communities (Ahuvia, 2005; Cova, Kozinets, & Shankar, 2007). This change in the consumption paradigm affects a firm’s innovation strategy. Customer knowledge becomes more and more important for innovation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2003) in an overall context, where the dominant marketing logic is increasingly based on services (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). In this scenario, the value created by a firm is the result of co-production and co-creation processes that place firms in relation to customers and their different consumption contexts (Cova & Dalli, 2008).
