Is Coproduction too complex? No for those who fantasize.

Is Coproduction too complex? No for those who fantasize. 1. Introduction Managers and researchers have recently identified customer participation in production (co-production) as the new frontier for competitive effectiveness even in mass markets (Chan et al 2010). Co-production asks for customers to participate in running the various activities performed in one or more of the production stages (Etgar 2008). Such a collaboration provides both customers and firms with increased value: On the one hand, customers are more satisfied (Ouschan et al 2006), more willing to purchase the product and paying a premium price (Tseng and Piller 2010). On the other hand, companies have incentive to offer increased participation opportunities to customers given the relatively high “money on the table” (Franke et al 2009) provided by the higher benefits offered to customers and their consequent willingness to pay (Franke et al 2010). Given that co-production seems a win-win option both for customers and companies, it is worth to investigate why customers sometimes decide not to start them (Etgar 2008), resulting in big failures as the cases of Levi Strauss's "Original Spin" jeans and Mattel's "My Design Barbie (Franke and Piller 2004) show. Factors preventing customers to participate in co-production processes might be linked to lacking resources and individual capacities (Lusch et al 1992): These processes provide customers with a greater range of possible choices and combinations that require cognitive abilities and effort to be dealt with (Pralahad and Ramaswamy 2004). In order to attract customers and engage them in co-production activities, companies have to make them perceive that these processes are simple to interact with. When involved in a process perceived as easy and simple, customers are more able to enjoy and exploit the benefits deriving from co-production and thus being more satisfied with their co-produced products. Hence, investigating how to make the co-production process effortless is the core question of this paper. In this paper we propose that fantastical thinking, acting as a cognitive booster, is the key element to make perceive complex processes as effortless. Thanks to two experimental studies in a real online co-production setting, this paper shows that high fantastical thinking individuals develop greater attitude toward the product (Study 1), that product involvement moderates the relationship between fantastical thinking and outcome satisfaction (Study 2) and that the impact of fantastical thinking on satisfaction is mediated by cognitive effort (study 2) confirming the role of cognitive booster of the fantastical thinking process.