Customers Who Help Other Customers Are Partners in Creating Value

In many online support forums, the person who solves a customer’s problem is not an employee. It is another customer. A study in the Journal of General Management treats these helpers as partners in creating value. It maps what they exchange with the firm and with the customers they help.

The McCoy College of Business authors are Corey Fox, Associate Professor in the Department of Management, and Steven W. Rayburn, Chair of the Department of Management. The lead author is Hope Arabie, also of Texas State University.

The study

The researchers define a customer-partner as a customer who does more than buy and use a product or service. Customer-partners volunteer to help end-customers use the firm’s products or to fix problems with them. They are not paid for it.

To understand this role, the authors combine several strands of theory. Value creation research explains how firms and customers produce value together. Social exchange and resource exchange theories explain what people trade when they interact, including tangible things like information and intangible things like status and goodwill.

The evidence comes from a netnography, an observational study of an online community. The setting was the online support community of a high-technology company. The authors watched how the firm, customer-partners, and end-customers interacted and what each side contributed and took away.

What the researchers found

The result is a multi-directional value creation model. Value does not flow in one line from firm to customer. It flows in a network. The firm gives resources to customer-partners and end-customers. Customer-partners give resources to end-customers and back to the firm. End-customers give resources in return. Each link is a reciprocal exchange.

The study also identifies three activities a firm must get right if it wants customers to take part in value creation. The first is platform design: the community must be built so that exchange is easy and visible. The second is customer profiling: the firm needs to recognize which customers are likely to become partners. The third is platform engagement: the firm has to show up and take part, rather than leave the community to run itself.

What it means for managers

Managers who run support communities, user forums, or brand communities should stop thinking of active members as merely engaged customers. They are a labor source, a knowledge source, and a reputation source. That means investing in them.

The three activities give a practical checklist. Audit whether the platform makes helping easy and rewards it. Build a way to identify likely partners early. Assign staff to participate in the community, answer questions, and recognize contributors.

The model also points to a strategic question. If customer-partners supply a meaningful share of support, the firm’s cost structure and service quality both depend on people it does not employ. Understanding what those people receive in return is the first step to keeping them.

This summary is based on the paper’s abstract. The full article reports the data, methods, and detailed results.

What it means for managers

• Customer-partners are a distinct group. They voluntarily help other customers use your products. Identify them and treat them as part of value creation, not just as buyers.
• Value flows in many directions. The firm, customer-partners, and end-customers all give and receive resources when they interact.
• Three activities make integration work: design the platform for exchange, profile customers to find likely partners, and engage actively on the platform.

Arabie, H., Fox, C. J., & Rayburn, S. W. (2026). Resource flows in a multi-directional integrated value creation model. Journal of General Management, 51(3), 304–317. 10.1177/03063070231198735