Exploring open innovation engagement process of hotel brand community members: motivation, empowerment and consequences

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the open innovation engagement process in terms of how online community members create and share knowledge for open innovation and the consequences of engagement. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed methods approach based on netnography (Study 1), qualitative interviews (Study 2) and surveys (Study 3) was adopted in three studies. Findings – The results of Study 1 show that hotel brand community members actively create and share their knowledge by evaluating hotel policies, providing service suggestions and creating new service ideas. The results of Study 2 identified enjoyment and empowerment as major antecedents of the engagement and brand loyalty and a sense of brand community as major consequences. In Study 3, the relationships among them were quantitatively examined. Research limitations/implications – This research provides empirical knowledge on online engagement and identifies the innovation value of online platforms. The research also provides knowledge on the engagement process for open innovation by online community members in terms of its antecedents and consequences. As a main limitation of the study, this research only focuses on a single online brand community. Originality/value – While most existing tourism research analyzes the role of user-generated content in customer decision-making, this research provides a fresh insight into the innovation value of customer knowledge.