Experience Co-creation and Social Diffusion: The Experiential Marketing of Customized Cup Stickers by Heytea

AIEN Institute, Shanghai Ocean University, 201306 Shanghai, China

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

In the context where consumers’ demand for tea beverage products has shifted towards emotional expression and social sharing, the brand is committed to creating a deeply engaging consumption experience. This study takes the “customized cup sticker” activity of Heytea as a case, and combines the IKEA effect and the theory of social currency to explore the mechanism of how experience co-creation influences product identification and sharing behaviors. The research method employed a semi-structured interview approach, conducting in-depth interviews with 15 consumers who had participated in the customization of tea cup stickers. A four-stage analysis framework of “participation trigger, creative perception, value evaluation, and social diffusion “ was constructed. The research results indicate that experiential co-creation can also stimulate consumers’ deep psychological engagement in low-intervention consumer products, and the triggering of the IKEA effect in lightweight co-creation scenarios is diverse. Secondly, the products resulting from experiential co-creation can be transformed into social currency, forming a positive cycle of “participation - sharing - re-participation”. At the same time, lightweight experiential co-creation can also stimulate deep psychological engagement in low-intervention consumer product scenarios, providing empirical support for the integration application of the IKEA effect and social currency theory.