How showing others' ideas influences consumer creativity: The moderating role of participation motivation

•Showing other people's ideas promotes consumer creativity as opposed to not showing them.•Utilitarian and hedonic motivations affect consumers' willingness to acquire knowledge.•Consumers with utilitarian motivations are more likely to acquire specific knowledge, while consumers with hedonic motivations are more likely to focus on the sense of experience.•Consumer creativity is influenced by two factors: willingness to acquire knowledge and motivation to participate. Organizations increasingly believe in the value of engaging consumers actively in innovation, and knowledge and creativity are widely recognized as key competitive factors. This study considers consumers' utilitarian and hedonic motivations in a research model based on goal-setting theory and explores the effect of consumer knowledge acquisition on creativity—specifically, the mediating role of knowledge acquisition on consumer creativity in the context of whether or not to show others' ideas—and discusses the moderating role of consumer engagement motivations in the context of the relationship between whether or not to show others' ideas and knowledge acquisition. The results show that consumers reported higher levels of creativity in the context of presenting others' ideas; utilitarian consumers had a higher willingness to acquire knowledge and thus reported higher levels of creativity than hedonistic consumers.