Creative new product ideas enable firms to maintain product innovativeness and organizational performance(Scanlon & Jana 2007, Andrew et al. 2010, Jaruzelski & Dehoff 2010, Burroughs et al. 2011, Bayus 2013). However, extant literatures argue the difficulty of maintaining the innovativeness by relying solely on the firm’s new product development effort(Andrew et al. 2010, Jaruzelski & Dehoff 2010, Jeppesen & Lakhani 2010). As a result, firms outsource new product & service ideas to the crowd of consumers. The process is coined as crowdsourcing and has become a trend in new product development(Howe 2006, 2008; Sullivan 2010; Afuah & Tucci 2012; Poetz & Shreier 2012; Bayus 2013; Zhao & Zhu 2014). From crowdsourcing, firms can collect ideas from the end-users of the market who experience inconvenience by using the product in their daily lives. So from crowdsourcing, firms can bring freshness into its new product development process(Bayus 2013; Seltzer & Mahmoudi 2013).
Crowdsourcing operating firms have an online crowdsourcing platform to provide information of the crowdsourcing project to participants and to collect ideas easily(Poetz & Schreier 2012). Extant literatures have studied the influence of environments, physical, social & organizational and computer softwares that can foster individual’s creative performance(Aiello et al. 1977, Elam & Meed 1990, Stone & Irvine 1994, Feldhusen & Ban Eng Goh 1995, Amabile et al. 1996, Massetti 1996, Marakas & Elam 1997, McCoy & Evans 2002, Shibata & Suzuki 2002; 2004, Dul & Ceylan 2011). However, lack of research have been done to figure out the relationship between online environment and creativity, even though online environment is perceived as another environment by users(Rosen & Purinton 2004). If online environment can foster creativity, firms will be able to gain more creative new product and service ideas from the consumers. So that firms can get higher probabilities to produce creative products from the ideas, which will benefit its performance in the market. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out how design of a crowdsourcing platform influences crowdsourcing participant’s creativity through perceptions from the website.
Online environment of crowdsourcing platforms are constructed with diverse design methods, researchers focused mostly on categorizing aesthetics of the website(Lavie & Tractinsky 2004; Deng & Poole 2010; Moshagen & Thielsch 2010). Our study narrowed design of the website into design simplicity and design aesthetics to compare different effects of the two dimensions(Lavie & Tractinsky 2004; Moshagen & Thielsch 2010).
Extant Human-Computer Interactions(HCI) researches studied different design methods to figure out their influence on users. Extant studies reveal design elements(images, color, texts, etc.) consisting the website are perceived as environmental cues(Kaplan & Kaplan 1982; Rosen & Purinton 2004). As a result, environments in the website can be viewed as environments so it influences users’ perceptions from the website(Moon & Kim 2001; Lavie & Tractinsky 2004; Cyr et al. 2006; Ahn et al. 2007; Coursaris et al. 2010; Deng & Poole 2010; Moshagen & Thielsch 2010), and creativity of the users.
In crowdsourcing, creativity of the participants play significant role. If participants become more creative, the more opportunity for firms to choose creative ideas to solve their new product and service problems. Therefore, divergent thinking and convergent thinking creativity of crowdsourcing participants are related with crowdsourcing.
Divergent thinking is an ability to generate as many ideas that are also original and novel, whereas convergent thinking is an ability to find the solution of a given problem. Both terms are widely used in creativity literatures(Mednick 1962, Guilford 1967, Marsh et al. 1999, Förster et al. 2004, Dijksterhuis & Meurs 2006, Davis 2009, Mehta & Zhu 2009, Runco 2009, De Dreu et al. 2014, Gocłowska et al. 2014, Steffens et al. 2016).
Previous studies reveal play and playfulness positively enhance creativity of individuals(Lieberman 1977, Pepler & Ross 1981, Bateson et al. 2013, Chang 2013, Bateson & Nettle 2014). Therefore, perceived playfulness from the online environment can positively influence creativity of the user.
Extant creativity researches have not studied the influence of utilitarian aspect from the website, such as the influence of perceived ease of use on individual creativity. Thus, it is difficult to predict the relationship between utilitarian perceptions and user creativity. However, we expect perceived ease of use to influence user creativity positively. Because when a user visits the website and interacts with it, cognitive flow is triggered which leads to creative process(Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Rosen & Purinton 2004).
Consequently, We predict crowdsourcing platform’s design simplicity and design aesthetics will positively enhance the user’s perceived ease of use and playfulness. Because of positive relationship between website design and perceptions from the website(Lavie & Tractinsky 2004, Cyr et al. 2006, Coursaris et al. 2010).
Then, we predict two dimensions of creativity: divergent thinking and convergent thinking will get positively influenced by perceived playfulness and ease of use. Figure 1 describes our theoretical model and hypotheses.
We looked through 40 crowdsourcing platforms that are operated in the United States in 2015. Then, we took snap shots of the 40 platforms – From the first stage of a crowdsourcing platform to submission stage of one’s idea. The snap shots of 40 platforms were provided in the survey which participants were randomly assigned. Total 2,859 observations were collected. Lastly, we randomly assigned 10 observations from each platforms to create a stratified dataset for structural equation modeling(MacCallum et al. 1999; Wolf et al. 2013).
Structural equation modeling was tested for the research model. According to the results, design aesthetics has positive influence on perceived playfulness, but it showed insignificant results on perceived ease of use. Design simplicity has positive influence on perceived ease of use, however it did not have significant influence on perceived playfulness.
Perceived playfulness has negative influence on both divergent and convergent thinking. On the other hand, perceived ease of use has positive influence on convergent creativity. Table 1 and Figure 2 depict the analysis result of the research model.
According to the results, website designs have influence on crowdsourcing participant’s creativity through perceptions from the website. Specifically, design aesthetics was found to have negative influence on convergent thinking and divergent thinking through perceived playfulness. On the contrary, design simplicity has positive influence on convergent thinking creativity solely through perceived ease of use.
From our findings, we contribute to current literatures by extending the influence of environment on creativity with online environment. Moreover, the study discovered the influence of perceived ease of use on crowdsourcing participants’ creativity. Therefore, in online environments, utilitarian aspect such as ease of use inspires crowdsourcing participants to become more creative, if the website is simply designed.
In addition, our study suggests managers to emphasize design simplicity of the crowdsourcing platform when they are developing one. Design simplicity of a crowdsourcing platform is balancing layouts, images, and color of the website, so that website users can perceive the environmental cues in the website to be harmonious. Then, firms will be able to gain more creative solutions of new products and services from the participants.
관계혜택(Relational Benefits)이 전환장벽과 점포충성도에 미치는 영향 : 오프라인 VS. 모바일 쇼핑
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