The Impact of Customer Creativity on Service Employees: An Emotional Appraisal Perspective

Abstract

Increasingly, transactions between firms and customers are typified by co-creation of value, wherein customers play an active role in the development of new products and services. In the past two decades, research on the dynamics of co-creation, and its largely positive effects on consumers and firms, has flourished in multiple disciplines of research. However, the effects of customer creativity on the service-providing employees themselves has received far less empirical attention, which is not necessarily surprising, given that research on the consequences of creativity at work, in general, is scarce. To contribute to our understanding of the effects of co-creation on employees, and of the outcomes of creativity, we examine how creative behavior from others at work (i.e., customers) affects the focal employees (i.e., service providers). Specifically, drawing from emotional appraisal theory and interpersonal complementary theory, we predict that perceived customer creative behavior elicits the emotion of inspiration in service employees, which in turn motivates them to engage in customer-oriented prosocial behavior. We also propose that customer creativity can elicit the emotion of performance anxiety, which leads to subsequent work withdrawal among employees. Using an experience-sampling study with three daily assessments in the service industry, we find support for our predictions. Furthermore, we find that the aforementioned emotional appraisal processes are contingent on employees’ creative role identity. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work.