The emotional effects of pre-service imagination on co-created value and co-innovation. An empirical study in the tourism sector

What is it about?

The Emotional Effects of Pre-service Imagination on Co-created Value and Co-innovation: An empirical study in the tourism sector. In tourism services, there is often a time gap between when customers book a tour and when it starts. This study examines the effects of customer imagination in the pre-service stage on their future-oriented emotions and on the dual service outcomes in the in-service stage. Specifically, the study elucidates how imagination evokes anticipatory and anticipated emotions and then how these cognitive and affective pre-experiences drive co-created value (CCV) for customers and co-innovation behavior (CIB) that benefits the firm. Drawing on the service-dominant logic (SDL), this study proposes a structural model linking the pre-service phase and the in-service encounter. This model was then tested by two-wave survey data (i.e., before and after the trip) from 294 tourists in Vietnam. The findings indicated the critical roles of customer imagination in triggering anticipated and anticipatory emotions and directly fostering customer CIB. Anticipated and anticipatory emotions affect CCV but do not directly influence CIB. Moreover, CCV was the influential factor motivating customers’ CIB. First, this study enriches SDL by extending value co-creation beyond provider–customer interactions to customers’ pre-service sphere, introducing imagination as a distinctive resource that generates anticipated and anticipatory emotions and primes customers’ in-service engagement. Second, by linking pre-service imagination to in-service value experience and co-innovation, the study advances tourism research with a novel conceptualization of customer contributions that bridge stages and foster collaborative value creation and provider innovation.

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