The research for this paper was conducted over approximately the past seven years through multiple studies. Initial conceptual work focused on understanding the key design elements of virtual customer environments and the different customer value cocreation roles they facilitate. Following this conceptual work, over the next two years or so, we conducted two sets of extensive interviews with customers. The first set was with customers who had participated in the VCEs of companies, including Microsoft, HP, IBM, Sony, Palm, Volvo and Bang & Olufsen. The interviews focused on understanding customers’ motivations for participating in innovation and value creation and obtaining detailed descriptions of their interaction experiences in such forums. The second set focused on Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional program. We conducted in-depth interviews with a number of people who had been awarded the MVP title as well as with Microsoft managers associated with this program. We also conducted interviews with managers and officers in other organizations associated with VCE initiatives (for example, the executive director of the Consortium for Service Innovation).

We followed these interview-based studies with multiple empirical studies that involved analyzing survey-based data collected from more than 500 customers who had participated in VCEs. The research models examined in the empirical studies were developed by drawing on theories and concepts from different areas, including innovation management, computer-mediated communication, consumer psychology, brand communities and information technology management. These studies helped us to validate the four components of customer experience and to understand their effect on both innovation and customer relationship management. The findings from the empirical studies as well as the insights derived from our earlier interview-based studies provided the basis for this