Configurational Paths to Generating Knowledge Benefit through Configurational Paths to Generating Knowledge Benefit through Customer Participation Customer Participation

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. Thus, customer participation is believed to provide the firm with knowledge benefits by enabling it to capture customers' knowledge related to their needs and the solutions to their needs (Nambisan 2002;Poetz and Schreier 2012).
However, all firms that engage customers in their NPD processes do not realize these knowledge benefits in reality. This is because obtaining knowledge benefits through customer participation is not merely the outcome of integrating customers in NPD but is the result of a causally complex phenomenon in which many interconnected factors simultaneously come into play. Researchers have shown that the effectiveness of customer participation hinges on the NPD stage or combination of NPD stages (i.e., ideation, development, and launch stages) in which customers are engaged (Chang 2019;Chang and Taylor 2016;Gruner and Homburg 2000). Moreover, research on knowledge management highlights the importance of a firm's ability to transfer external knowledge, integrate the knowledge with a firm's existing knowledge stock and apply it to a new product (i.e., a firm's absorptive capacity; Cohen and Levinthal 1990;Morgan, Obal, and Anokhin 2018), and efficiently and effectively coordinate the co-creation process between the NPD team and customers (i.e., a firm's coordination capability; Fang, Palmatier, and Evans 2008). Furthermore, the influence of external environmental turbulence including the complexity of customer needs, competitive intensity, and technical turbulence on the effectiveness of customer participation has been long suggested as a key factor in the creation of knowledge benefit (Morgan, Anokhin, and Wincent 2019).
In sum, a firm's acquisition of knowledge benefit through customer participation in NPD relies on the interactions of the stage in which customers participate in a firm's NPD process, a firm's internal co-creation-related capabilities (i.e., a firm's absorptive capacity and coordination capability), and external environmental turbulence (i.e., complexity of customer needs, competitive intensity, and technical turbulence). There is no single success factor leading to knowledge benefit but several paths composed of different combinations of key factors. Thus, the realization of knowledge benefit via customer participation is best understood from a configurational perspective. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to explore various configurational paths to generating knowledge benefit by considering interactions among customer participation in the NPD process, a firm's internal co-creation related capabilities, and external environmental turbulence.
Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) combines both a qualitative (caseoriented) and a quantitative (variable-oriented) method and identifies configurations of conditions that are necessary or sufficient for the occurrence of an outcome (Lexutt 2020;Ragin 2008;Schneider and Wagemann 2012). While of the reality about customer participation than traditional linear and additive models (Fiss 2011;Lalicic and Weismayer 2021;Zheng, Ulrich, and Sendra-García 2021 First, customer participation in one phase may be more valuable than in others because each NPD phase requires distinct tasks and skills and therefore customers may come up with more valuable inputs in a specific NPD stage (Chang and Taylor 2016;Gruner and Homburg 2000). Specifically, Chang and Taylor (2016) and Gruner and Homburg (2000) found that involving customers in either the ideation or launch stage promoted new product success,  (2018) noted that a firm's absorptive capacity is a necessary prerequisite for building innovative and commercially successful new products when utilizing customer participation. They also found empirical evidence of the positive moderating impact of absorptive capacity between customer participation and NPD performance.
A firm's coordination capability is proposed as another pivotal co-creation-related capability for knowledge benefit. In the co-creation context, a firm's coordination capability refers to the extent to which a firm is able to work together with customers effectively to accomplish a collective set of tasks in the NPD process (Fang, Palmatier, and Evans 2008

Measures
The scales used in this study are based on empirically validated scales and adapted to the co-creation context in NPD. • Market testing: the stage at which the complete marketing plan for a proposed product is tested in a small geographic area • Commercialization: the stage at which a proposed new product is launched into the market ABSORP • Our NPD team quickly recognized the usefulness of insights that customers suggested.

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• Our NPD team valued insights that customers suggested.
• Our NPD team could easily address the new needs that customers specified.
• Our NPD team could take corrective action immediately when customers suggested modification of a product or service. • Our NPD team could effectively satisfy customers' demands. COORD • Customers and the NPD team worked together very effectively to exploit unique opportunities.

0.892
• Both customers and the NPD team were always looking for synergistic ways to do business together. • Customers and the NPD team coordinated our business activities very effectively.
• Customers and the NPD team communicated significant information effectively.
• Customers and the NPD team made decisions on the new product quickly. • There was little conflict when customers and the NPD team made decisions on the new product. • Scheduling meetings or interactions with customers was easy. CUSENV • Customers' product preferences change quite a bit over time.

Necessity Conditions
An analysis of necessity conditions was first conducted to find whether a condition always precedes an outcome and therefore must be treated as essential (Lalicic and Weismayer 2021). In set-theoretic terms, the necessary condition is a superset of the outcome (Ragin 2008). The results of the necessity analysis are presented in Table 2. The necessary conditions procedure produces consistency and coverage scores for individual conditions (Ragin 2018).
In the necessary analysis context, consistency indicates the degree to which the causal condition is a superset of the outcome, whereas coverage indicates the empirical relevance of a consistent superset (Ragin 2018). According to Ragin (2008), consistency scores of 0.9 or higher reflect necessary conditions. Notes: IDEATION = customer participation in ideation, DEVELOP = customer participation in development, LAUNCH = customer participation in launch, ABSORP = co-creation absorptive capacity, COORD = co-creation coordination capability, CUSENV = complexity of customer's needs, COMENV = competition intensity, TECENV = technological turbulence. "~" indicates the negation of the condition.

Sufficient Conditions
Sufficiency means that "the outcome always occurs when the sufficient condition is present" (Lexutt 2020, p. 112)

Managerial Implications
The configurational results provide specific practical guidelines about what managers should do to take full advantage of customer participation and promote knowledge benefit.

Limitations and Further Research
Although this research takes a configurational approach for firms to gain knowledge benefit through customer participation using a state-