Reveal or conceal? The word-of-mouth masking effect following co-creation failures

Purpose Word of mouth (WOM) is often regarded as a key marketplace signal of product and service quality. However, WOM following co-creation failure may not always reflect consumers’ actual experience. This research aims to examine how different levels of customer participation (high vs low) affect consumer WOM following a co-creation failure. In doing so, it identifies impression management motivation as the underlying process and reveals social exposure as a boundary condition. Design/methodology/approach Four experiments were conducted with participants recruited through online research platforms Prolific and Credamo. Studies 1a, 1b and 2 used a one-factor between-subjects design, randomly assigning participants to a low- or high-participation condition in a co-creation failure scenario. Study 3 used a 2 (customer participation: low vs high) × 2 (social exposure of failure: private failure vs public failure) between-subjects design, randomly assigning participants to one of the four conditions. They then rated measures of WOM, impression management motivation and perceptions of pleasure, satisfaction, failure perception and internal attribution as alternative explanations. Findings Results reveal a “WOM masking effect”: when co-creation fails, high-participation consumers express positive WOM toward the co-creation firm to mask the failure, such that WOM expression deviates from their actual experience. This effect is driven by impression management motivation. Moreover, social exposure moderates this process. When co-creation failure is public (vs private), the mediating effect of impression management motivation weakens, and the positive effect of customer participation on WOM diminishes. Research limitations/implications While this study supports internal validity through experimental methods, future research could validate findings using secondary data to enhance generalizability. Additional moderators like the severity of co-creation failure and face consciousness warrant investigation. Practical implications The results suggest that managers should interpret WOM following co-creation failure with caution, because such WOM may be driven by impression management motivation and used to mask the co-creation failure, weakening its diagnostic value for evaluating co-creation outcomes and identifying underlying problems. Originality/value This research challenges the prevailing assumption that WOM following co-creation failure mainly reflects consumers’ internal perceptions of the co-creation outcome. It uses an external presentation perspective and reveals a WOM masking effect: WOM communicated by high-participation consumers may deviate from their actual experience. Following co-creation failure, positive WOM may be strategically used to manage social image and may not be a reliable indicator of co-creation success.