Consumers Participate In Product Design To Product Satisfaction

With the development of IT technology and communication network, customers today can have more easy and quick access to lots of information. Thus, the contradictions between traditional business value, which is firm-centered or product-centered, and diversified customer demand are becoming increasingly evident. The customers desire for interaction and participation with the firm to co-create the product value by themselves, rather than passively waiting to be satisfied by the products offered. It’s key to understand how to conduct interaction of high-quality with customer for firms to gain its core competiveness. On the other hand, previous studies of customer participation, which concentrated in service marketing area, had few insights of related research in product co-creation from customer psychology perspective. In this study, we try to figure out the mental mechanism of how consumer participation into product-design influences their satisfaction with the very product.After the study with the experimental groups, we conclude as follows:First, consumer psychological ownership mediates the relationship between consume participation and satisfaction; Second, consumer involvement strengthens the positive relationship between consumer participation and psychological ownership, especially for the products of high importance and self-expression; Third, consumer involvement strengthens the positive relationship between consumer psychological ownership and satisfaction, for products of high importance, self-expression and hedonism. The conclusion that there is no direct relationship between customer participation and satisfaction is consistent with the research in service marketing. However, we prove that it’s "ownership effect" other than "control effect" that mediates the relationship in the product co-creation process.At the end of our study, we provide management suggestions to strengthen the consumer psychological ownership and consume product involvement on two sides, and advice some ideas for further research.