Fostering Co-Innovation through Value Co-Creation and Customer Knowledge in Sport Clubs: The Moderating Role of Cognitive Processing and Customers Behavioral Engagement

Co-innovation is an important concept for organizations because it allows them to collaborate with external partners to create new products and services (Saragih & Tan, 2018). Creativity and innovation are critical for the successful performance of any organization, and co-innovation can help organizations achieve these goals (Laud et al., 2023). Co-innovation is a tool in which new ideas and approaches from various internal and external sources are applied differently to create new value or experience for all stakeholders, including consumers (Lee et al., 2012). Co-innovation is essential to study in sport services because it helps to understand how human resource management practices affect innovation activities and performance in sport service firms (Papaioanno et al. 2024). The study of co-innovation also examines the role of user-based approaches in creating service innovations in the public sector, which is very important to renew public services and respond to growing needs and challenges ahead (Kallio et al., 2013). Co-innovation allows sport organizations to collaborate with external partners, such as customers, to create new products and services (Næss & Tjønndal, 2013). This collaboration can lead to new and innovative ideas that would not have been possible without the participation of foreign partners. Through the study of co-innovation in sports services, researchers can suggest future research directions and management implications in relation to bridging the gap between sports studies and innovation (Ratten, 2016). In general, co-innovation studies in sport services contribute to understanding the management and performance of innovation in the sport industry (Potts & Ratten, 2016). Co-innovation has been studied from different angles that focus on collaboration, coordination, co-creation, co-integration and co-complementarity (Saragih & Tan, 2018). Co-innovation outputs include new business models, customer base, value, value chain, new products and services (Saragih & Tan, 2018). Co-innovation requires new roles for researchers and the activation of new settings (Botha et al., 2017). Some studies focused on co-innovation process. & Russo Spena Mele (2011) identified co-innovation as a series of "co" concepts: co-generation of ideas, co-evaluation of ideas, co-design and co-launch. They identified practices in each "co" including actors, actions, tools, and images. Other studies addressed the outcomes and benefits of co-innovation. & Abreu Urze (2016) introduced an approach to understand the ability of co-innovation networks to produce innovation in processes and products. & Nguyen Adomako (2023) investigated the relationship between co-innovation behavior and sustainable innovation, also controlling for the influence of drivers such as absorptive capacity and competitive intensity. In addition, the process of co-innovation has been studied and verified in various industries such as the music industry, which usually includes steps such as co-discovery, co-creation, co-delivery and co-capture (Saragih et al., 2021). However, research on the predictors of co-innovation is very limited. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research related to the concepts that can be effective on co-innovation. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to fill this scientific gap. The aim of this research was to investigate the moderating role of cognitive processing and behavioral engagement of customers with sports clubs on the relationship between value co-creation, co-innovation, and customer knowledge. The present research was a correlational study conducted in the field. The statistical population of the research was customers of sports clubs in the city of Nasiriyah in Iraq, of which 408 individuals were selected as the sample using stratified sampling method. The co-innovation questionnaire of Arias-Pérez et al. (2020), customer knowledge of Behnam et al. (2020), value co-creation of Nysveen and Pedersen (2014), and cognitive processing and behavioral engagement of Hollebeek et al. (2014) were used. SPSS version 18 and PLS version 4 were used for data analysis. The results showed that customer knowledge has an effect on value co-creation. This finding is a new contribution to the previous literature on customer knowledge in sports services (Behnam et al., 2023; Fesanghari et al., 2020). This result can be discussed in the framework of the service dominant logic paradigm, which places customers as value creators alongside businesses (Zhou et al., 2024). Customer knowledge, in this context, refers to the understanding, experiences, and insights that customers bring to the value creation process. The dominant logic of service emphasizes that value is not intrinsic to goods or services but is created through interactions between customers and businesses (Hussain et al., 2022). Another result of this research showed that co-creation of value has an effect on co-innovation. Our study contributes to the exercise value framework (Woratschek et al., 2014). We demonstrated the important role of value co-creation in co-innovation in sports services. By showing how customers engage and acquire knowledge from their respective groups in an interactive environment, the results contribute to the 6th basic premise of the sports value framework (Woratschek et al., 2014), i.e. value co-creation in co-innovation. This research highlighted that value co-creation has a mediating role on the relationship between customer knowledge and co-innovation. This finding added to previous literature on value co-creation and customer knowledge in sports (Behnam et al., 2020; Kolyperas et al., 2019). Customers have valuable insight into their needs, preferences and market. By engaging customers in co-innovation, organizations can use this knowledge to create more relevant and innovative products and services. Finally, the results showed that cognitive processing has a moderating role on the relationship between customer knowledge and value co-creation. This finding provided new insight to previous customer engagement literature (Hollebeek et al., 2022). Customer knowledge is an important factor in value co-creation because it enables customers to participate more effectively in value creation. Cognitive processing refers to the mental activities that occur when processing information, making decisions, and engaging in problem solving. When cognitive processing moderates the relationship between customer knowledge and value co-creation, it suggests that the way customers process information and understand knowledge is a key factor in determining their involvement in value co-creation.