Customer involvement in new service development: a conversational approach

Lundkvist, Anders; Yakhlef, Ali

doi:10.1108/09604520410528662

Cited by 123 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Involving the customer provides a correct innovation direction and enables the firm to reduce the investment costs, time, and diversity of uncertainty that may occur in the innovation process [26,27].…”

Section: Technology-explorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of technology-exploration on product innovation: an analysis based on Korean manufacturing SMEs

2016

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Today, fierce competition drives firms in their continual efforts to introduce products with a higher degree of novelty into the market. There is a growing need to understand important activities so as to achieve product innovation. This empirical study demonstrates the effect of technology-exploration, including outsourcing R&D, external networking, customer involvement, and inward IP licensing, on product innovation, especially considering the degree of the novelty of the manufactured products. Using data from a sample of small and medium Korean manufacturing firms, our results show that technology-exploration are crucial determining factors as to whether low or higher degree of novelty is achieved in product innovation. The positive impact of higher degree of innovation novelty comes from customer involvement and outsourcing R&D. In addition, customer involvement has positive impact only on low degree of innovation. Other practices have no impact on either low or high degree of novelty in product innovation.

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Section: Technology-explorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of technology-exploration on product innovation: an analysis based on Korean manufacturing SMEs

2016

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“…Strategic minded firms harness the creativity of their customers and blend it with their own dynamic capabilities to co-create products, solutions, communications, and experiences. Consequently, to reduce uncertainties of new product development process (NPDP), consumers are actively involved in the entire process (Kaulio, 1998;Lundkvist and Yakhelf, 2004;Hanna et al, 1995;Ciccantelli and Magidson, 1993) though different firms observe this collaboration at different stages of NPDP (Lagrosen, 2005). …”

Section: Critical Analysis Of the Changes In Consumers' Participatorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratizing the New Product Development Process: A New Dimension of Value Creation and Marketing Concept

Awa¹

2010

IBR

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This paper theoretically examined how key success factors (KSFs) of new product development process, as a new dimension of marketing concept and value creation, could be exploited through learning outside the firm or through customer involvement in key stages of the development process. Such collaborative relationship-though suffers scholarly neglect in Nigeria, costly and perhaps difficult to apply and more profound in B2B than B2C transactions-is benefiting in terms of manipulating the environment to a firm's advantage through having products that exactly meet the aspirations of the world of customers, though consumers are erratic and rarely verbalize their needs with precision. All things being equal, user involvement reduces large inventories and distribution costs, minimizes product returns, builds strong customer relationships, matches production with consumption patterns, promises customer willingness to pay premium price, makes managerial decisions flexible, and above all achieves the ideals of TQM, and perhaps marketing concept. However, different firms benefit from different forms of user interactions subject to top management idiosyncrasy, market power, and competitive environment. Often the extent of disruption on established behaviour pattern (e.g.; radical and incremental concepts) determines the measure of customer interactions. SMEs follow distinct action rationality, leading to rapid implementation of some user inputs, and defensiveness towards others and larger firms are more exposed to user inputs because of their supposedly huge and better resources, yet less committed to execute it. Therefore, this paper developed a model of designers and users involvement based on literature. It joins other similar papers to raise alertness on facilitating the spread, and actual implementation, of user involvement philosophy in radical and incremental innovations irrespective of the industry and other environmental variables.

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“…However, the specific actions and behaviors that make up co-creation have not yet been fully addressed (Witell et al, 2011). Gruner and Homburg (2000) and Lundkvist and Yakhlef (2004) argued that the process of communication and socially rich interactions with customers is one of the determinants for product success. Furthermore, Payne et al (2006) reported that communication is an important element in a company's ability to manage value co-creation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Customer co‐creation in service innovation: a matter of communication?

Gustafsson

Kristensson

Witell

2012

Journal of Service Management

282

239

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Purpose -Customer co-creation is becoming increasingly popular among companies, and intensive communication with customers is generally seen as a determinant of the success of a new service or product. The purpose of this study is to analyze customer co-creation based on four dimensions of communication -frequency, direction, modality, and content -in order to understand the value of customer co-creation in service innovation. One of the key aims of the study is to investigate whether all dimensions of customer co-creation have an effect on product and market success, and if the effect depends on the degree of innovativeness of a development project. Design/methodology/approach -The authors conducted a study including 334 managers with experience in new service and product development to examine how development projects applied customer co-creation in terms of communication in order to address future customer needs. Data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS). The first analysis was performed with a sub-sample of 207 development projects regarding incremental innovations. A subsequent analysis was performed with a sub-sample of 77 development projects on radical innovations. Findings -A total of three of the four dimensions of customer co-creation (frequency, direction, and content) have a positive and equally significant effect on product success when developing incremental innovations. For radical innovations, frequency has a positive effect and content has a negative significant effect on product success. These findings suggest that co-creation and innovation can be combined, but that the choice of methods for co-creation differs depending on whether incremental or radical innovations are developed. Originality/value -Despite a general consensus that co-creation with customers is beneficial, there is a lack of agreement regarding how and why. The present article addresses this shortcoming and shows that co-creation is largely about communicating with customers in order to understand their future needs. On the other hand, a company working on radical innovations may wish to limit customer input that is too concrete or solution based.

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Customer involvement in new service development: a conversational approach

Cited by 123 publications

References 27 publications

The effect of technology-exploration on product innovation: an analysis based on Korean manufacturing SMEs

The effect of technology-exploration on product innovation: an analysis based on Korean manufacturing SMEs

Democratizing the New Product Development Process: A New Dimension of Value Creation and Marketing Concept

Customer co‐creation in service innovation: a matter of communication?

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