Background: Business environments and markets are changing rapidly and produce a strong demand for innovative products and services. To meet this demand, anincreasing number of companies apply co-creation to develop products and services according to customer needs. Co-creation affects customers’ perception of and behaviour towards a brand. However, these effects are context specific and differ between customers who took part in the co-creation practice and the ones who did not (observers).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to measure the extent to which the communication of a company’s co-creation practices (vs. traditional new product development practices vs. no information about the development method) in the mobility service context influences the brand perceptions of observers in terms of quality of the service and innovation ability of the company. Ultimately, we aim to quantify potential effects on the observers’ behavioural intentions in terms of their purchase intention and their intention to spread positive word of mouth.

Method: We conducted a quasi-experimental study with a post-test-only control group design and used a self-completion online questionnaire to gather fruitful data from a representative sample. To extract the effects of co-creation on the observers’ brand perceptions and behavioural intentions, we dissected the collected data mainly by means of multiple linear regression analyses.

Findings: Our main finding is that observers of co-creation practices in the mobility service context develop significantly stronger behavioural intentions in terms of purchase intention and the intention to spread positive word of mouth. However, this effect is not of a direct nature but rather fully mediated through significantly positive effects of co-creation on observers’ brand perceptions in terms of quality of the service and innovation ability of the company.

Conclusion: Companies should consider to actively communicate the efforts they put into co-creation practices. In this communication, they should especially point out the positive effects that co-creation has on their product’s quality and on their own innovation ability.