Nexus of Value Co-Creation Dimensions: Moderating Role of Customer Trust using Mixed Methods

The goal of this study was to explain the relationship between customers’ participatory and citizenship behaviors and the moderating effect of customer trust. Four specific objectives, four research questions, and four hypotheses were developed to explain the relationships. For the purpose of complementarity, the mixed-methods approach was adopted and 385 customer samples were randomly selected from customers of 15 commercial banks in a northeastern state in Nigeria and a questionnaire instrument was administered using a Google online form. For the qualitative stream, 7 customers who had business and utility accounts and over 15 years of banking residency were purposefully selected and interviewed. The Process Macro statistical tool was used to analyze the quantitative hypotheses, while thematic template analysis was used to analyze interview data in NVivo R20 software to triangulate findings. The findings of the study indicate a significant relationship between customer participatory behavior and customer citizenship behavior of commercial bank customers. The finding also showed that customers' trust does significantly moderate the relationship between the value co-creation dimensions. It revealed that the banks with limited employees’ strength when compared with customers-ratio outweigh employees’ effectiveness, thus leading to inefficiencies and unethical disposition of the employees. The study therefore recommends that commercial banks strengthen their value-creative policy by improving network efficiencies and employees' service delivery packages to encourage customers to build service trust and reciprocate in value co-creation participation.