Risk assessment of co-creating value with customers: A rough group analytic network process approach

•Risk factors identified when providing customized design.•Risk assessment for the involvement of customers and suppliers.•Integrating rough number and analytic network process.•A novel multi-criteria decision making approach for risk assessment.

Co-creating value with customers is becoming an important competition strategy for companies. It provides a feasible way to meet customers’ personalized requirements. However, the strategy needs effective management to obtain benefits because it may involve many potential risks. Neglecting these risks may lead to extra-budgetary costs, wrong decision of product investment or loss of customers. To the best of our knowledge, little attention has been paid so far to the risk assessment of co-creating value with customers.This study mainly focuses on assessing the risks of co-creating value with customers under uncertainty. First, the scattered literature is combed systemically to determine the risk factors of co-creating with customers. Then, a novel approach called the rough group analytic network process is proposed to assess these risks quantitatively. The proposed approach can intelligently handle decision maker's subjectivity and vagueness, and the interdependences/feedbacks among risk factors. Finally, an industrial case study is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed approach, and the proposed approach is compared with other existing methods to demonstrate its the advantages.