Customer value co-creation in the business-to-business tourism context: the roles of corporate social responsibility and customer empowering behaviors

Abstract

Customer value co-creation is a process that contributes to a tour company's sustainable growth. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in fostering customer value co-creation in the business-to-business (B2B) tourism service context as well as the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Participants in the research were frontline employees and managers of tour companies and their customer companies in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The quantitative data were cross-sectionally collected via emailed questionnaires and analyzed through structural equation modelling. Our research results confirmed the positive link between CSR and customer value co-creation. The evidence was found for the mediating roles of customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (customer-oriented OCB) and service recovery performance. Moreover, empowering behaviors from customers served as a moderator to influence the positive relationships between CSR and customer-oriented OCB as well as service recovery performance. The study thus advances convergence between CSR and customer value co-creation research streams, which has been under-explored in the tourism context. The research also extends these two research streams through a novel dual mediation mechanism and through customer empowering behaviors as a novel moderator.