Which Motivations Boost Idea Quality? Exploring the Impact of Customers' Motives for Participating in Virtual Ideas Communities on Ideation Outcome

For practice it is important to leverage ideas of high quality from Virtual Ideas Communities (VIC). Therefore, firms that run such VIC have a strong interest in understanding which factors impact customers’ ideation outcome. This research investigates the influence of customers’ motivation factors for developing ideas on the quality of their ideas. So far, empirical studies that provide evidence on this association are neglected, although these insights would be highly beneficial for firms in their role as operator of VIC. Knowing the factors that have a positive influence will provide valuable insights into how to design effective incentive strategies that attract corresponding customer motivations and, in turn, will lead to higher levels of idea quality. In this research-in-progress paper we build a theoretical model explaining which of customers‘ motives for developing ideas have a positive impact on their ideation outcome.