How does Service Firm's Innovation Images affect Customer Participation? The Mediating role of Customer-company Identification

As an important way for service firms to win the market competition, innovation can not only bring new experience to customers but also cultivate and improve service firms’ innovation image which is perceived by customers and affect their behavior in the service encounter. From the perspective of customer-company identification, this paper proposes the influence mechanism of innovation image on customer participation. Through a survey of 354 customers in the financial industry, the conceptual model and hypotheses are empirically tested. The results show that: service firms’ innovation images have a significant positive impact on customer participation through the mediating effects of customer-company identification. Specifically, the technical innovation image shows fully mediated positive effects on customer participation through both cognitive and affective customer-company identification. However, non-technical innovation image's positive effect on customer participation is partially mediated by affective customer-company identification. non-technical innovation image's effect on cognitive customer-company identification is not significant.