Customer participation under moderating role of relationship strength

Many literature researches on customer participation simplistically focus on external factors of customers and ignore the influence of customer internal components on customer participation outcomes. To demonstrate the importance of relationship strength to the process of customer participation, this paper takes relationship strength as a moderator variable to explore its influence on relationship benefits enhancement and customer loyalty when customers are in process of customer participation. An empirical investigation is conducted through a structural equation model. The research results show that: customer participation significantly affects relationship benefits; relationship strength has a significantly moderating role in the impact of customer participation on relationship benefits enhancement. The research results provide some references for further research and certain instructions for organization's operation.