Customer engagement and value co-creation: a case of textile industry in Pakistan

Following the emergence of sophisticated modern technologies, marketplaces are becomingincreasingly competitive globally. Brands are competing with each other in multiple ways forsustaining in the current competitive marketplace. Value co-creation is one of the keybusiness practices that is becoming more and more common in the marketplace as, throughvalue co-creation, brands are not only able to enhance customer satisfaction but also gatherinnovative ideas. Particularly in the textile industry, value co-creation practices have beenadopted for a long time. Companies in western countries have been effectively utilisingmodern technology for engaging customers in value co-creation processes and manyempirical studies have been conducted to assess the benefits of such engagements. However,a review of the existing literature indicated that no study was conducted in the Pakistanitextile industry for assessing the advantages and challenges of engaging customers in valueco-creation processes as well as the role technology can play in facilitating suchengagements; this study, therefore, investigates relationships between customer engagementand value co-creation attitude, advantages and challenges of engaging customers in the valueco-creation processes, and the roles modern technologies play in engaging customers in valueco-creation processes.This research followed a mixed-methods approach by combining both quantitative andqualitative methods. A total of 11 qualitative interviews and 332 quantitative questionnaireresponses were collected for this research. Manual thematic analysis was used for the analysisof qualitative data whilst Chi-Square, ANOVA, and correlation tests were conducted forexamining the relationships between different quantitative variables.This research identified that customers that actively engaged with brands are more likely toparticipate in value co-creation activities. This research also identified that demographicfactors such as age and gender significantly influence shoppers shopping frequencies.Additionally, five key advantages of engaging customers in value co-creation processes,namely meeting customers demand through product customisation and personalisation,developing better relationships with customers, innovation leading to competitive advantages,enhanced customer experience resulting in customer loyalty, and increased revenue collectionwere identified along with two challenges associated with engaging customers in value cocreationprocesses, namely damage in reputation due to inconsistencies in products/servicesoffered and value destruction as a consequence of negative feedback from customers. Finally,this research also revealed that modern technologies immensely benefit the value co-creationprocesses by helping businesses to reach a wider range of audiences, providing digitalmarketing and electronic word of mouth opportunities, and offering enhanced supportsystems to customers. These findings make significant contributions to the literature bybridging the existing knowledge gaps.