Experiential response and intention to purchase in the co-creative consumption of music: the Nine Inch Nails experiment

Customers allowed to co-create products are more willing to purchase them eventually, because of their utilitarian but also their hedonic and experiential value. Experiential responses seem especially relevant in the co-creative consumption of cultural and intangible goods, such as music. To examine how such intangible aspects of co-creation can influence a consumer's intention to purchase, we let two groups of participants rate their experience consuming music in either a traditional or co-creative way, in an experimental situation inspired by the work of American rock band Nine Inch Nails. Participants in the traditional group had to passively watch a series of music video; participants in the co-creative group were tasked to produce a video montage using the same material. In the traditional group, purchase intention was predicted by music quality, mediated by willingness to re-experience; in the co-creative group however, purchase intention was only predicted by the consumers' experiential response, with no mediation of either music quality or willingness to re-experience. Additionally, the overall experiential response to music was lower in the co-creative group than in the traditional group, leading to lower intention to purchase. These results suggest that co-created value for intangible goods is predicted at least as much by the consumers' experiential response as by their evaluation of product quality. It also suggests that there is nothing systematically positive in having consumers participate in the co-production of intangible goods, and that research is needed to identify the factors predicting the perceived quality of a co-creative experience.