Management Research Review
Enhancing service firm performance through customer involvement capability and
innovativeness
Thomas Anning-Dorson, Robert Ebo Hinson, Mohammed Amidu, Michael Boadi Nyamekye,
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Thomas Anning-Dorson, Robert Ebo Hinson, Mohammed Amidu, Michael Boadi Nyamekye, (2018)
"Enhancing service firm performance through customer involvement capability and innovativeness",
Management Research Review, Vol. 41 Issue: 11, pp.1271-1289, https://doi.org/10.1108/
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Enhancing service firm Service firmperformance
performance through customer
involvement capability
and innovativeness 1271
Thomas Anning-Dorson Received 12 July 2017
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Revised 24April 2018Accepted 1May 2018
University of Ghana Business School, Ghana
Robert Ebo Hinson
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship,
University of Ghana Business School, Ghana and
University of the Free State Business School, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Mohammed Amidu
Department of Accounting, University of Ghana Business School, Ghana, and
Michael Boadi Nyamekye
Department of Marketing, University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana
Abstract
Purpose – Because of the paucity of empirical research on firm-level capabilities of firms for effective
customer involvement, the purpose of this study is to evaluate service firms’ capacity to coopt customers to
enhance the innovativeness and firm performance relationship. This study conceptualizes involvement
capabilities of service firms as a strategic driver that exploits their internal firm assets, which in turn
facilitates the positive relationship between innovativeness and firm performance.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 344 managers of service firms across
different sub-sectors in an emerging economy. The study first confirmed the constructs through confirmatory
factor analysis before analyzing hypothesized relationships. Regression models were specified with robust
standard errors to test the hypothesized relationships.
Findings – The study found that involvement capability of service firms helps them to exploit their
relational assets and create and manage strong customer participation. Additionally, it was found that
involvement capabilities enable service firms to capitalize on the competencies of customers, which in turn
improves the outcomes of their innovativeness. The results showed that the interaction between involvement
capability and innovativeness enhances firm performance significantly.
Practical implications – Service firms can enhance customer participation in the value creation process
by increasing their involvement capabilities. The increase in such capabilities will enhance the innovativeness
of service firms, thereby improving their financial and non-financial performance.
Originality/value – This study offers guidance on how a firm’s innovativeness and customer involvement
work together within the service operation to enhance firm performance.
Keywords Customer involvement, Innovativeness, Service rm performance, Management Research Reviewfi Vol. 41 No. 11, 2018
Strategic management and leadership, Customer co-creation, Involvement capability, Service operation pp. 1271-1289© EmeraldPublishingLimited
2040-8269
Paper type Research paper DOI 10.1108/MRR-07-2017-0207
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MRR 1. Introduction
41,11 The goal of organizations has evolved from relationship marketing to involving and
engaging customers in all possible ways in the value creation process (Pansari and Kumar,
2017). This is because value is not solely created by the firm, rather value is co-created with
the customer (Lusch and Nambisan, 2015). Storey and Larbig (2017, p. 101) reinforce this
point by saying that information on customer needs and how best to serve these needs are
1272 best obtained from the customer. Customers have more knowledge about the problem, while
the service providers have more information about the solution, hence the need to involve the
customer in the creation of the value that satisfies (Moeller et al., 2013). The influence of
customer involvement in the value creation process has received a lot of attention in the
management literature (Yi et al., 2011; Ngo and O’Cass, 2013; Blasco-Arcas et al., 2016).
Extensive research in the service has looked at customer involvement and participation from
different perspectives to emphasize the importance of the subject to service firm development
(Ryzhkova, 2015; Chen et al., 2016). However, in the empirical examination of customer
involvement, less attention is paid to the firm-level capability to involve (Anning-Dorson,
2018). The lack of depth in empirical research in this area does not help us understand how
the firm can effectively be the value facilitator it ought to be as explained by Grönroos (2011).
Anning-Dorson (2018, p. 2) defines involvement capability as to “the extent to which firms
are able to engage customers in the value creation and delivery process”. As a capability,
customer involvement is rooted in the routines of the service firm’s process such that it
endears and disposes the firm to allow the customer to direct the interaction process. Anning-
Dorson (2016) describes it as the ability to create the environment for the customer to have
direct and fruitful interaction, as it engages the customer in the value delivery process.
Involvement capability facilitates the creation of an atmosphere conducive for the customers
to perform the two distinct roles of information sharing and co-development (Fang, 2008;
Grönroos, 2011). The firm-level capability is considered critical, as the effective functioning of
the customer in the co-creation process depends on the firm’s ability. This is even more
important in services where value is more than often co-produced (Vargo and Lusch, 2004;
Andreassen et al., 2015).
Furthermore, in the marketing literature, customer involvement in the value creation
process, especially in service operations, has been acknowledged as enhancing competitive
advantage (Auh et al., 2007; Payne et al, 2009; Yi et al., 2011). In creating competitive
advantages, it is also suggested by Ordanini and Parasuraman (2011) that the capability to
involve the customer during service development transforms the customer into an operand
resource, which increases the firm’s innovativeness. However, Ngo and O’Cass (2013) note
that recent research on innovativeness and customer involvement offers little guidance on
how a firm’s innovation and customer involvement work together to enhance firm
performance. Innovation is defined as the firm’s capacity to engage in the introduction of
new processes, products or ideas. While some findings have suggested positive association
between involvement and innovation (Cui and Wu, 2016), others have also found no
relationship (Menguc et al., 2014). Storey and Larbig (2017) call for deeper understanding of
how the two capabilities interact to influence firm success. In this study, we investigate how
service firm’s capability to involve the customer strengthens innovativeness to enhance
service firm performance.
In the organizational capability literature, there is a surprising absence of the
simultaneous examination of the performance implications of innovation and customer
involvement (Newbert, 2007; Ngo and O’Cass, 2013). Given the importance of both
innovation and customer involvement in creating a superior advantage for enhanced
performance, it is important to address this lacuna in the literature. The extant literature
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(Ordanini et al., 2011; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) shows that customer involvement Service firm
influences innovativeness in service operations. However, Sharma et al. (2014) note that performance
there are several gaps in the field’s knowledge. One of the gaps is the underdeveloped
understanding of the role of customers in service innovation (Alam, 2006, Ostrom et al.,
2010). Additionally, few studies (Sharma et al., 2014, Ordanini et al., 2011) have examined
organizational-level capabilities in terms of customer involvement and its linkages with
service innovativeness and performance. This paper addresses these gaps by examining the
combined effect of customer involvement capabilities and innovativeness in improving 1273
service firm performance. We argue that involvement capability is an important internal
capacity that enables service firms to facilitate the process of customer involvement/
participation. The rest of the paper is set out as follows: theoretical background and
hypotheses, methodology, analyses, discussion and conclusions.
2. Theoretical background and hypotheses
The organizational capability perspective underpins this study. Collis (1994) asserts that
capabilities are those that reflect an ability to perform the basic functional activities of the
firm, such as plant layout, distribution logistics and marketing campaigns, more efficiently
than competitors. In line with that, Helfat and Peteraf (2003) defined organizational capability
as the “ability of an organization to perform a coordinated set of tasks, utilizing
organizational resources, for the purpose of achieving a particular end result” (999). Teece
et al. (1997) explained from the dynamic improvement perspective by saying that a firm
capability is the ability to learn, adapt, change and renew over time. From the organizational
capability perspective, the performance differences among firms can be explained by their
capabilities (March, 1994; Augier and Teece, 2009). In fact, how firms are able to incorporate
sets of specific, identifiable processes or commonly accepted best practices as part of their
routine operation, determines their performance over time (Branzei and Vertinsky, 2006;
Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000). Zander and Kogut (1995) explain that the capabilities of a firm
lie primarily in the organizing principles by which individual and functional expertise is
structured, coordinated and communicated. They are, therefore, reflected in the ability of the
firm to perform repeatedly, or “replicate”, productive tasks that relate to the firm’s capacity to
create value (Teece and Pisano, 1994). Capabilities emerge through the integration of
specialist knowledge across a number of individuals and are associated with the
development of organizational competences and routines (Teece and Pisano, 1994).
Organizational capabilities exploit resources and also enhance the efficacy of other firm-level
competencies (Teece et al., 1997). This study sees involvement capability as being core to the
operations of service firm and allows for internal process and system flexibility to facilitate
customer participation in the production and delivery of value. It reflects the service firm’s
integration of knowledge across the different customer interaction points and is associated
with developing routines that facilitates customer integration into the production and
delivery process. It therefore determines how the customer as a resource will be utilized.
In the sphere of service operations, the customer provides production resources in the
form of information or effort in the servuction for the firm to create value (Hsieh et al., 2004).
However, the ability of firms to learn from, utilize and collaborate with their customers to
create the required value is dependent on the level of customer involvement capability
(Augier and Teece, 2009). Service firms that are able to turn their customers into a functional
resource and actually utilize such resource in the value creation process, would have
developed the capacity to reshape, reconfigure idiosyncratic and specialized asset that
enhance operational efficiency and strategic effectiveness. The extant research has shown
that customer involvement has a positive effect on innovation activities of service firms
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MRR (Anning-Dorson, 2016; Ryzhkova, 2015); hence, the ability of a firm to optimize customer
41,11 involvement will positively influence innovativeness. This study posits that service firms
that are high on customer involvement capabilities would enhance their innovativeness and
their performance in both financial and non-financial terms. We also argue that both
customer involvement and innovativeness capabilities can be complemented such that the
more the service firm is able to involve the customer, the better the chance of innovation.
1274 Anning-Dorson (2018) found that there is a positive relationship between customer
involvement and innovation propensity of firms.
From the above, we present Model 1 to explain the relationships being tested. The
research model shows that there is an expected direct relationship between innovativeness
and firm performance, which has been confirmed by a number of studies (Visnjic et al., 2016;
Grawe et al., 2009; Lusch and Nambisan, 2015). The current study, therefore, does not set as
a hypothesized relationship even though it is included in the model testing. The model
focuses on the direct relationship between customer involvement capability and firm
performance, on one hand, and the interaction effect of innovativeness and involvement
capability and firm performance on the other hand (Figure 1).
2.1 Involvement capability and firm performance
The capability theory suggests that capabilities are routines through which firms alter their
resource base – acquire and shed resources, integrate them together and recombine those
(Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000). Capabilities are seen to be rooted in routines, practices and
operations of firms and, therefore, pose as imitation barriers for competitors (Ngo and
O’Cass, 2013). Developing the appropriate capabilities consequently helps firms establish a
sustainable competitive advantage and maximize their growth and performance (DeSarbo
et al., 2007). The thrust of the argument in this paper is that service firms that are able to
develop the appropriate operational capabilities are able to deploy their resource effectively
to enhance strategic success. Variance in the possession of customer involvement
capabilities will result in differential effectiveness at generating and utilizing customer
engagement opportunities to enhance performance.
Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2000) and Larivière et al. (2017) note that customers are
fundamentally changing the dynamics of today’s marketplace and, therefore, can alter the
linear relationship between strategic efforts and firm performance. The customer offers to
the production process two value streams: resource base (as a resource) and partnership (as
a co-creator) (Grönroos and Voima, 2013; Ma et al., 2017). The onus is on the firm to
successfully deploy the customer effectively to create the needed value for both the customer
Customer Involvement 
H1a&b
Capability (CIC)
CIC x Product Innovativeness H2a&b
CIC x Process Innovativeness ● Financial Performance
● Non-Financial Performance 
Figure 1. Product Innovativeness
Hypothesized
Process Innovativeness Non-hypothesized
Researchmodel
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and the firm. This study agrees that it is not in every service process that the involvement of Service firm
the customer is required and that customer participation may not be necessary at all times. performance
However, it is argued in this study that customer involvement capability does not only
facilitate the direct involvement of the customer into the co-creation process but also
facilitate the use of the customer as a resource even outside of the direct co-creation process.
We argue that involvement capability offers the service firm the necessary capacity to be
flexible andmeet customer utilization requirement at all times.
As espouse by Cheng et al. (2012), customer involvement offers the rm the opportunity 1275fi
to design, develop and launch innovative products and service through the effective
utilization of the customer. Additionally, Storey and Larbig (2017) offers that involvement
capability enables firms in the utilization of external knowledge as it facilitates acquisition,
assimilation and transformation of new knowledge to create and exploit performance
opportunities. It also facilitates information flow between the firm and customer; hence,
information exchange allows the firm to meet both the current and future needs. The closer
the firm is to the market (customers and other players), the better the chances of obtaining
knowledge at a lower cost, timely updates and accurate knowledge. The capacity of the firm,
therefore, becomes important in the effective deployment of the customer both as a resource
and as co-creator as espoused by Trischler et al. (2017). This paper argues that firms with
high levels of operational flexibility (which creates high customer involvement capabilities)
will profit more from the service production and delivery process. The rationale is that such
firms would have the capacity to guide the customer to direct the value creation process,
which improves customer satisfaction and customer value – a measure of non-financial
performance and important antecedent to improved firm performance (Han and Hyun, 2018;
Rego et al., 2013). Beyond this, customer involvement has been found to be associated with
improved firm performance (Storey and Larbig, 2017; Wang and Kim, 2017; Auh et al., 2007).
The thrust of our argument is that involvement capability enhances the value co-creation
process of service firms which has been found to have a positive relationship with firm
performance (Feng et al., 2016; Jouny-Rivier et al., 2017; Pansari and Kumar, 2017). This is
made possible because when involvement capability is high, customers are allowed to direct
the service co-creation process, shape the quality of service delivery and provide information
on future needs and demands and also persuade prospective customers to experience the
service. These acts go a long way in satisfying the customers, which has a direct and
positive relationship with overall firm performance.
The study, therefore, hypothesizes that:
H1. The higher the customer involvement capability of a service firm, the higher the
service firm (a) financial performance and (b) non-financial performance.
2.2 Innovativeness-involvement capability interaction and firm performance
Hult et al. (2004) assert that firms that stay close to customers are likely to benefit from
innovation activity more than those that do not. Having the ability to stay close to customers
helps to generate and respond to intelligence on customers’ present and future needs
(Jaworski and Kohli, 1993). More recent literature has confirmed the importance of customer
involvement in innovation activities. For instance, Storey and Larbig (2017) and Saldanha
et al. (2017) found that customer involvement has a positive effect on service design success
and innovation. This was because involvement capabilities allow firms to exercise their
ability to acquire external knowledge, assimilate such knowledge and transform it into
innovative offerings and processes. Storey et al. (2015) emphasize that involvement
capabilities help firms develop innovative products and processes tailored to suit customer
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MRR preferences and in turn improve sales and overall performance. Ngo and O’Cass (2013) note
41,11 that innovativeness is closely related to customer involvement such that as firms encourage
customer participation, they are able to engineer a fit between their innovation activities and
customer demands.
In services, customers play an interesting and complex role in a service firm operation, as
they do not only receive and consume the service but also serve as an important component
1276 in its improvement process (Normann, 1984; Ryzhkova, 2015). Anning-Dorson (2018)
explains that customer involvement capability allows firms to develop new ideas on what
exactly customers are asking for, which leads to the introduction of new products and
processes. The importance of customers in the innovation process is born out of the fact that
customers are important holders and source of external knowledge that explains their needs
and aspirations. Customers are central to the value creation and delivery process. Capturing
their unique knowledge about usage and latent needs is key to innovation (Mahr et al., 2014).
As explained by Storey and Larbig (2017), customer involvement paves the way for
absorption of customer knowledge, which facilitates the development successful products
and services. Additionally, the customer from the value co-creation perspective possesses
certain competencies that help in the creation of new products and services to meet changing
needs (Witell et al., 2017). This study argues along the lines of Blazevic and Lievens (2008)
that those firms with higher levels of customer involvement capabilities can capitalize on the
competencies of customers to improve upon the effects of their innovativeness. The service
innovation literature tends to suggest a significant difference between successes and failures
in service innovations with greater customer involvement in successful offerings compared
to those that were unsuccessful (Cui and Wu, 2016; Anning-Dorson, 2018; Yeh, 2016). We
therefore argue that aligning innovation activities with customer involvement capabilities
will enhance how well firms satisfy customers and also improve the performance of service
firms both in short and the long term. We posit that involvement capabilities must seek to
complement the innovation efforts of service firm such that they can create both customer
and firm value. Hence, the position of this paper is that the interaction of customer
involvement capabilities and innovativeness will enhance service firm performance, that is,
financial and non-financial performance. We, therefore, hypothesize, thus:
H2. Customer involvement capabilities will enhance the positive relationship between
innovativeness (process and product) and service firm (a) financial performance
and (b) non-financial performance.
3. Methodology
3.1 Sample and data collection
The data for this study were collected from the service sector of Ghana. To develop a
sampling frame, the study used an online database – Ghana Business Directory (GBD) (from
ghanaweb.com) to identify services firms across different sub-sectors. This database has
been used in similar studies such as Anning-Dorson (2016) and Story et al. (2015). The GBD
provided detailed information about the firms that allowed easy accessibility via personal
contact and other means of communication. A total of 27 Universal Banks and 390 SMME
Financing Institutions (the two extremes of banking service providers); and 106 Insurance
Firms constituted of 18 Life, 26 General and 61 Brokerage firms were obtained. The list also
had 558 business and management consultancy firms, 354 lodges and guesthouses, 741
media and communication firms and 204 general merchants. The total of all the eligible
firms stood at 2,380; however, the study particularly focused on firms with active office(s)
located in at least one of the three largest cities of Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi. This
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brought the final figure to 1,881. Questionnaires were emailed to each firm for the non- Service firm
performance questions to be filled by a top management member in charge of marketing, performance
clients’ service or operations or any related portfolio. An instruction was included on the
questionnaire that performance measures (thus, financial and non-financial performance)
were to be filled by finance manager/officer. After two reminders and follow-ups, a total of
408 responses were received. After excluding those who significantly could not complete the
questionnaire and those who were not in a management position, the final number of useful
questionnaires amounted to 344, which were used for the analysis. In all, 108 were from 1277
banking institutions, insurance 48, consulting 24, media and communication 61, hospitality
52 and retailing 51. Following the Armstrong and Overton (1977) recommendation, the
responses of questionnaires collected within the first two weeks were compared with that of
the past two weeks. The group means were not significantly different; hence, non-response
bias was not considered a problem for this study.
4. Measures
4.1 Product innovativeness
The measurement of product innovativeness in this study relied on studies such as Sundbo
et al. (2007), Alam (2006), Sirilli and Evangelista (1998). Product innovativeness in service
firms is reflected new service development, product launch success, leading in service
product originality, new service release rate and service offering differentiation. All items
were on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.
Process innovativeness: in measuring process innovativeness in service firms, this study
relied on the works of Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan (2001); Sirilli and Evangelista (1998)
and Sundbo (2003). It was measured by the extent to which service firms create and improve
the method of service delivery, and the adoption of new elements (e.g. input materials, task
specifications, information flow and equipment) –Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan (2001) to
the firm’s production process (Gallego et al., 2013). Four items were used to measure process
innovativeness also on a seven-point Likert scale.
4.2 Involvement capability
This was measured by following the works of Anning-Dorson et al. (2015), Stokes (2014) and
Berthon and John (2006). Six items were used to measure involvement capabilities also on a
seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The items
measured how service firms allow customers to direct the interactions, encouragement for
customers to participate in the service delivery, co-design and co-production. It further
measured how customer insights are gathered, how to incentivize the customer to
participate and invite prospective customers.
4.3 Firm performance
Firm performance was measured in both financial and non-financial terms. Financial
performance was assessed on five measures – return on investment, profit, sales volume,
market share and cash flow as done in studies such as Odoom et al. (2017) and Jaworski
and Kohli (1993). The non-financial performance was measured by service quality,
customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction as used in the Anning-Dorson (2017a).
Performance is measured relative to major competitors that enabled control
of performance differences caused by differences among sectors and served markets.
Performance is measured as the top managers’ assessment of the indicators mentioned
above. Again, the seven-point Likert scale is used (“over the past three years, our
company has shown much better performance across these indicators than the main
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MRR competitors, 1 = “much worse”, 7 = “much better performance”). In developing
41,11 economies, Hoskisson et al. (2000) and Anning-Dorson (2017b) reckon that hard data
across performance measures for a large number of enterprises is unavailable. The
situation in this study was no different, hence, the use of subject measures for firm
performance in this study, as previous studies have found a strong correlation between
subjective assessments and their objective counterparts (Slater and Narver, 1994).
1278
4.4 Control variables
To partial out the effect of certain firm-level characteristics that may confound the findings,
the study controlled for such characteristics. Following Wang (2008), the study controlled
for firm size, type of service (industry effect), firm age, the number of owners and form of
ownership as having a potential impact on the performance of financial service firms. The
study measured the size by the log of the total number of full-time employees; and firm age
by the log of the number of years the firm had been in business. Industry effect was
controlled for as the importance of the industry in which a firm competes as a predictor of
firm-level variables is widely recognized in the literature (Dess et al., 1990). As indicated, the
study controlled for the number of owners and the form of business ownership in terms of
private or public.
5. Analyses
5.1 Assessment of measures
Table I presents the standardized loadings and the t-values of each indicator. All
indicators had significant standardized loadings of p-value # 0.05, and t-values of the
individual indicators ranged from 5.52 to 17.66 (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). The
reliability and validity of the measures represent the constructs being evaluated and
assess the psychometric properties of scaled measures (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).
Composite reliabilities indicate internal consistency, which means that the measures
consistently represent the same latent construct. The composite construct reliability of
each construct ranged from 0.66 (product innovativeness) to 0.71 (non-financial
performance), which meets the acceptable criteria (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Hair et al.,
2010). The variance-extracted estimate measures the amount of variance captured by a
construct in relation to the variance because of random measurement error. The Average
Variance Extracted (AVE) is reported in the diagonal of Table II. The variance extracted
scores of the constructs ranged from 0.55 (process innovativeness) to 0.70 (financial
performance), which suggests adequate convergent validity (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988;
Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Hair et al., 2010).
The five constructs were tested for the goodness of fit and validation of scales of the
measurement by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We used AMOS 20 and the
maximum likelihood estimation procedure to examine all scales. The exact model fit was
assessed using chi-square (x 2) test. Modeling after Bagozzi and Yi (1988), a number of
approximate fit heuristics were also examined to provide additional information on
model fit and the indices ranged from good to very good. The five-factor CFA model fits
the data well, with indices meeting the respective criteria (x 2(d.f.(degree of freedom)) =
143.876 (78); goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.98; normed fit index (NFI) = 0.95; Tucker–
Lewis index (TLI) = 0.95; IFI = 0.96; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.96; root mean square
error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.062; and standardized root mean residual (SRMR) =
0.042. These indices meet the accepted criteria for the overall model fit of the sample
group suggested by Hair et al. (2010) and Kline (2015).
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Service firm
Constructs/Measurement items Factor loading t-value CR performance
Customer involvement capabilities 0.92
We allow customers to direct the interaction during service
delivery at all times 0.860 Fixed
We always encourage our customers to help us in the
production of quality service 0.820 7.321
Our customers generally co-design and co-produce most of 1279
our products 0.750 7.632
We continuously encourage our customers to persuade
prospective customers to experience our products/services 0.792 8.587
We frequently provide incentives to foster participation of
customers in new product/service development 0.819 7.738
We always gather market insights through face-to-face
customer meetings, visits, workshops or customer
suggestions’ 0.819 7.212
Product innovativeness 0.88
Our company is always able to differentiate our products
from the competition 0.784 Fixed
In comparison with our competitors, our company has a high
success rate in new product launch 0.781 9.540
Our company is faster in bringing new service offerings into
the market than any other 0.791 10.422
Our company has introduced more innovative products
during the past five years than any other 0.764 8.398
New products in our company often take us up against new
competitors 0.737 7.263
Process innovativeness 0.83
We adapt to different service processes to meet customer
needs 0.768 Fixed
During the past five years, our company has developed many
new management approaches to help serve customers faster
and better 0.730 5.521
Our future investments in new service process are significant
compared with our annual turnover 0.693 6.922
Our company changes service process at a great speed in
comparison with our competitors 0.792 7.162
Financial performance 0.92
Better cash flow 0.837 Fixed
Better return on investment 0.869 17.440
Better market share 0.804 14.405
Better return on investment 0.844 17.660
Better cash flow 0.850 14.530
Non-financial performance 0.85
Employee satisfaction 0.718 Fixed
Customer satisfaction 0.879 16.943 Table I.
Service quality 0.838 14.189 Measurement model
To investigate the multicollinearity of constructs, the assessment of discriminant validity is
tested. Discriminant validity compares the variance-extracted estimates of the
measurements with the square of the parameter estimate between the measurements. If the
variance-extracted estimates of the constructs are greater than the square of the correlation
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MRR between two constructs, then the evidence of discriminant validity exists (Fornell and
41,11 Larcker, 1981). On the basis of this test, the study found that the correlation between any
pair of main constructs was not larger than the respective square root of the average
variance extracted for each of the constructs, in support of discriminant validity (Table III).
An initial measure to avoid common method bias was to allow different respondents to
answer the dependent and the independent variables. However, because respondents came
1280 from the same company and the fact that there were no available objective measures for
performance, a test for common method variance (CMV) was conducted. This was done to
eliminate any possibility of common method variance that may cast doubt on the integrity
of the findings of this study. The study tested for common method bias through Lindell and
Whitney’s (2001) test for CMV and found that CMVwas not a problem for the study.
5.2 Results
To assess the hypotheses, multi-variable linear regression estimation with robust standard
errors was performed, where controls were first regressed on firm performance (financial
and non-financial performance). In the second model, the direct effects of product
innovativeness, process innovativeness and customer involvement capability were added.
Two additional models were added, in which each interaction terms (moderation effect) was
estimated, thus, Models 3 and 4. Table III shows the direct effects of product innovativeness,
process innovativeness and customer involvement capability. In Model 2, customer
involvement capability is found to be positively related to both financial (b = 0.198, p <
0.001) and non-financial performance (b = 0.122, p < 0.001). Hence, H1a and H1b were
confirmed; thus, the higher the customer involvement capability of a service firm, the higher
the financial and non-financial performance. Model 2 recorded a substantially higher R2 of
36.7 per cent for non-financial performance and 41.4 per cent for financial performance
compared to the 17.1 and 14.9 per cent recorded in Model 1 where only the controls
estimated. This shows that the explanatory powers of the two models in Model 2 were
superior to those in Model 1, indicating the effect innovativeness and customer involvement
on financial and non-financial performance.
To assess the moderation effects (i.e. the interaction effects), the study followed Little
et al. (2007) to create single indicants for each variable involved in multiplicative interactions
as the use of single indicants helps reduce model complexity. To reduce the possibility of
multicollinearity problems because of the usage of interactive terms, all measures involved
in multiplicative interactions were mean-centered. In Model 3, the interaction term of
customer involvement capability and product innovativeness was added to Model 2 and
estimated. The results found support for the hypothesis that customer involvement
capabilities will enhance the positive relationship between product innovativeness and
Correlation matrix 1 2 3 4 5
Customer involvement 0.65
Product innovativeness 0.277** 0.59
Process innovativeness 0.411** 0.430** 0.55
Financial performance 0.317** 0.426** 0.408** 0.70
Table II. Non-financial performance 0.317** 0.474** 0.504** 0.832** 0.66Mean 4.344 4.566 4.789 4.895 4.968
Discriminant validity Standard deviation 1.169 1.070 0.946 1.102 1.126
(correlations) and
descriptive Notes: Pearson correlation is significant at the 0.05 (two-tailed); **0.01
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Service firm
performance
1281
Table III.
Robust regression
analysis
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Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Financial Non-financial Financial Non-financial Financial Non-financial Financial Non-Financial
Variables performance performance performance performance performance performance performance Performance
Controls
Size 0.112 (0.0757) 0.0971 (0.0732) 0.0865 (0.0632) 0.0801 (0.0644) 0.0906 (0.0612) 0.0929 (0.0631) 0.0881 (0.0607) 0.0854 (0.0630)
Age 
0.126 (0.0914) 0.0931 (0.0884) 
0.0898 (0.0762) 0.118 (0.0775) 
0.125* (0.0737) 0.0894 (0.0761) 
0.127* (0.0733) 0.0878 (0.0761)
Service type 0.226*** (0.0268) 0.233*** (0.0259) 0.172*** (0.0227) 0.188*** (0.0231) 0.150*** (0.0222) 0.171*** (0.0230) 0.145*** (0.0222) 0.167*** (0.0230)
Nationality 0.216* (0.125) 
0.0656 (0.121) 0.134 (0.105) 
0.132 (0.107) 0.103 (0.102) 
0.148 (0.105) 0.111 (0.101) 
0.137 (0.105)
No. of owner 
0.00687 (0.114) 
0.0597 (0.110) 0.0151 (0.0956) 
0.0205 (0.0973) 0.0116 (0.0922) 
0.0251 (0.0951) 
0.00457 (0.0917) 
0.0458 (0.0952)
Public/private 
0.484* (0.262) 
0.734*** (0.253) 
0.176 (0.222) 
0.476** (0.226) 
0.150 (0.214) 
0.420* (0.221) 
0.0921 (0.214) 
0.363 (0.222)
Direct effect
H1: Customer involvement (CI) 0.1984*** (0.0346) 0.122*** (0.0352) 0.397*** (0.0528) 0.293*** (0.0545) 0.429*** (0.0540) 0.316*** (0.0561)
Product innovativeness 0.239*** (0.0404) 0.242*** (0.0411) 0.0634* (0.0344) 0.0823** (0.0355) 0.0552 (0.0342) 0.0819** (0.0355)
Process innovativeness 0.429*** (0.0523) 0.278*** (0.0532) 0.420*** (0.0498) 0.354*** (0.0514) 0.421*** (0.0494) 0.351*** (0.0513)
H2: Interaction effect
Process innovativeness CIC 0.108*** (0.0315) 0.125*** (0.0327)
Product innovativeness CIC 0.0805** (0.0347) 0.135*** (0.0358)
Constant 4.916*** (0.701) 5.426*** (0.678) 1.016 (0.650) 2.166*** (0.662) 0.606 (0.633) 1.719*** (0.653) 0.381 (0.635) 1.536** (0.659)
Observations 344 344 344 344 344 344 344 344
R-squared 0.149 0.171 0.414 0.367 0.455 0.395 0.461 0.396
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses; ***p< 0.01; **p< 0.05; *p< 0.1
MRR service firm performance (i.e. both financial performance and non-financial performance).
41,11 The coefficients were also found to be significant and positive for financial performance
(b = 0.081, p < 0.01) and non-financial performance (b = 0.135, p < 0.001). Model 4 shows
the results for the moderation effect of customer involvement capability on process
innovativeness-firm performance relationship. A significant and positive for financial
performance (b = 0.108, p < 0.001) and non-financial performance (b = 0.125, p < 0.001)
1282 was found.
6. Discussion and conclusions
Based on the results above, the study offers some important implications for both practice
and knowledge. From the findings, this study makes important contributions to the
customer involvement and service innovation literature. This study provides insights on the
challenges faced by service firms in making customers more functional in their operations to
impact positively on overall performance. Customers often see what is offered to them as
less finished and more as a process into which they can make an input to help them create
the desired benefit sought (Ngo and O’Cass, 2013). However, research on the firm-level
capacity to make customer participation has been lacking. This study sees involvement
capability as underlining service firms’ ability to create and manage strong customer
participation process (Rust et al., 2004). It is found that involvement capability helps service
firms to enhance their overall performance. Service firms that are able to develop their
involvement capabilities are able to coopt customers into the production and delivery
process, thereby enhancing the innovativeness of the firm.
The findings from the analysis suggest that customer involvement capabilities are
critical to both financial and non-financial performance. The findings suggest that
increasing the capacity of the service firm’s involvement capability will increase both
customer satisfaction and overall firm performance (Auh et al., 2007). Involvement
capability allows firms to meet customer needs faster and better than the competition and
such competitive advantage increases overall performance of the firm. Also, involvement
capability complements the innovativeness of service firms. All innovation efforts especially
products and process are targeted at improving the quality of value delivered to the
customer. Firms should develop the capacity to involve customers in their innovation
activities as such acts create competitive advantages (Ryzhkova, 2015). It is observed that
the higher involvement capabilities, the higher the innovativeness which in turn improves
both financial and non-financial performance. Involvement capabilities help in absorbing
external knowledge, which can be transformed into the production of new products and
services.
In service operations, customer participation is deemed to be critical to the value
creation process and, therefore, enhances competitiveness (Yi et al., 2011; Payne et al.,
2009). Innovativeness, in the same vein, has been linked with superior service firm
performance (Anning-Dorson, 2016). While both involvement and innovativeness can
have idiosyncratic effect to improve firm performance significantly, their concurrent
examination in the capability literature barely exists. This study examined the
complementary effect of service firms’ innovativeness and involvement capabilities on
firm performance. It was found that the interaction of customer involvement and
innovativeness brings synergistic advantages to service firms. This implies that higher
involvement capabilities will facilitate service firms’ product and process innovativeness.
The involvement capabilities allow service firms to stay close to customers, which helps
to generate intelligence on the present and future needs. The intelligence gathered would
enhance innovativeness in product and process, which increases customer satisfaction
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and overall firm performance (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993). As indicated by Chan et al. Service firm
(2010), encouraging and co-opting customers into business operations is next frontier of performance
competitive effectiveness and can be made possible by the involvement capability of the
firm.
Finally, on theoretical implication, in the development of firm-level capabilities such
as involvement, the exploitative ability to enhance the development of other internal
capabilities should be assessed. This study found that involvement capability enhances
the innovativeness of service firms. The findings extend Helfat (2007) assertion that some 1283
capabilities govern the rate of change of ordinary capabilities. The current study has
demonstrated that having the capacity to involvement customers into the value creation
process is an important prerequisite to fully exploit the innovation potential of service
firms. Service firms should endeavor to align their involvement capacity with other
capabilities such as innovativeness to create competitive advantage (Helfat and Peteraf,
2003).
This study also makes contributions to practice. First, firms, especially service firms,
must recognize that involvement capabilities offer two important advantages. One, they
improve both financial and non-financial performance. The results show a positive and
significant relationship between involvement capability development and firm performance.
The implication is that when service firms invest in creating access and increasing customer
participation opportunities, the returns are positive. This confirms the findings of Cui and
Wu (2016), Ngo and O’Cass (2013) and Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004). Increasing
customer participation opportunities would enhance the utilization of the customer as a
resource and also increase his/her effectiveness in the value co-creation process. This also
allows service firms to create the desired experiences to customers as their current and
future needs are shared effortlessly and naturally.
Second, they improve the effectiveness of strategy. Service firms are advised to develop
their involvement capabilities as a prelude to innovation. The results showed that when
involvement capability complements product and process innovativeness, there is
complementarity of capability that improves firm performance significantly. Service firms
stand a chance of accruing synergistic advantages through innovativeness that are built
from the involvement capabilities. Service firms should endeavor to create competitive
advantage through the alignment of involvement and innovation capabilities.
6.1 Limitations and future research
This study acknowledges certain limitations. First, although the purpose of the study was to
assess the influence of customer capability on innovativeness and firm performance, it
would have been interesting to assess this effect over time. The current study relied solely
on a cross-sectional data and, therefore, limits the interpretation of the findings. Future
studies may assess the extent of influence involvement capability on the innovation-firm
performance relationship with a longitudinal data to broaden the empirical scope. Finally,
the study recognizes the different characteristics of sectors and markets, which makes the
generalizability of findings of a study limited by these specific characteristics. Future
studies can replicate this study in other contexts. The application of the findings in this
study must also be aligned with the specific characteristics of sectors and markets to have a
meaningful impact.
Despite these limitations, it is believed that the insights developed in this study will not
only help service firms in their capability development and strategy implementation, but
also serve as motivation for researchers to further develop this line of inquiry in the
complementarity of capabilities in service operations management.
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Corresponding author
Thomas Anning-Dorson can be contacted at: thomasdorson@gmail.com
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