Article

Customers' Participation in Product Development through Crowdsourcing: Issues and Implications

July 2013
Industrial Marketing Management 42(5):683-692

DOI:10.1016/j.indmarman.2013.05.006

Authors:

Université de Lille

This paper focuses on customers' participation in a product development process through crowdsourcing practices. Results from five case studies of consumer goods companies suggest that the implementation of crowdsourcing operations affects the components of an existing business model and requires rethinking the marketing function. Moreover, despite some organizational constraints and fears, crowdsourcing generates a win-win relationship, creating value for both firms and customers. However, the findings reveal two negative consumer reactions to crowdsourcing practices, i.e., feelings of exploitation and being cheated, that may jeopardize their success. The results suggest the need to establish an open business model based on crowdsourcing.

Dynamic sustainable business modelling: exploring the dynamics of business model components considering the product development framework

Article

Mar 2022

Business systems are a subclass of dynamic, complex systems; the plurality of multifarious and interwoven factors affecting a business system makes prediction, modeling, and decision-making challenging for the players in such systems. This study conceptualises dynamic business modeling from a sustainability viewpoint by investigating the basic principles, requirements, and methodological limitations, as well as gaps in the business model design literature. This conceptual model combines an adapted business model canvas and system dynamics modeling using an up-to-date review. The studies used in this systematic review were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases between 2010 and 2021. The total number of publications in all databases was 422. However, following an in-depth investigation of these publications, 164 papers were selected for further review. Based on the business model canvas, the interactions between different business dimensions and the impact on environmental stakeholders were examined. Finally, a dynamic, sustainable business model canvas is conceptualised and developed. The findings suggest that the proposed system dynamics business modeling approach can frame the environmental, social, and economic drivers of value creation in a causal feedback structure and overcome the gaps and criticisms of existing business model design tools.

Managing internal and external crowdsourcing: An investigation of emerging challenges in the context of a less experienced firm

Article

May 2021
TECHNOVATION

It is increasingly common for firms to gather ideas and solutions through the use of crowdsourcing. However, limited focus is placed on understanding how firms can manage different crowdsourcing platforms to involve both employees and external crowds in innovation. The tendency of crowdsourcing research to focus on successful cases does not allow unfolding the difficulties that the implementation of these platforms create in less experienced firms. This paper presents an exploratory study of a large firm experimenting with both internal and external crowdsourcing. Based on data collected through interviews and secondary sources, we unveil the challenges experienced by the firm when implementing both platforms. We discuss how the implementation of both platforms impacted the work of R&D employees, as they were required to assume new roles and responsibilities related to crowdsourcing. Finally, we present how the firm attempted to address these issues. Implications for innovation research and practice are discussed.

The Effects of Platform Governance Mechanisms on Customer Participation in Supplier New Product Development

Article

Aug 2021
J BUS RES

The fast development of B2B digital platforms offers many suppliers opportunities to engage their customers in new product development projects on these platforms. However, customers are often reluctant to participate in these projects due to potential risks, such as leaking critical business information and opportunism. Digital platforms further increase these risks as customers may face more uncertainties due to a lack of physical contact on these platforms. Drawing on the transaction cost analysis, we examine how platform governance mechanisms (i.e., macroculture and collective sanctions) influence customer participation in supplier NPD on B2B digital platforms. We find that both macroculture and collective sanctions can potentially facilitate customer participation on B2B digital platforms but in different ways. Specifically, macroculture tends to influence customer participation directly, especially when customers have heterogeneous needs. In comparison, the impact of collective sanctions on customer participation is contingent on high platform accessibility and customer need heterogeneity.

Customer-Supplier Interactions in Crowdsourcing Practices: Customer Participation on Creating and Sharing of new Product Value

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2015

Crowdsourcing communities' participation revolves around customers throughout all steps of creating ideas and product value. Firms across manufacturing industries and suppliers have started to interact with customers/users to understand their knowledge, creative ideas and influence. However, little research exists that looks at the interactions between customers and networking suppliers through crowdsourcing to know how product value is created. Using institutional arrangement perspective to develop an end to end model, we tested model empirically based on sample of 185 manufacturers of construction safety equipment, electronic and optics, metal and metal working, and rubber and plastic products industries. The results show that customer participation affects product value and ideas creation by improving effectiveness of the new designed product development process by enhancing ideas sharing and customer-supplier interactions. Concerning product development process, customer resources investments are enhanced by increasing the soundness of the customer participation process. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of customer participation on the customers' share of new ideas and product value contribution part which is based on the dependence and equity perspective. Finally, we propose several suggestions for the distribution of knowledge sharing and product value to ensure the distribution of value is fair.

The role of consumer-consumer interaction and consumer-brand interaction in driving consumer-brand engagement and behavioral intentions

Article

Jul 2021
J Retailing Consum Serv

Grounded on service-dominant logic (S-D logic), a vital issue for marketers is to understand how the multiple approaches encouraging consumer participation (CP), as manifested by consumer-consumer interaction (CCI) and consumer-brand interaction (CBI), reflect on the extent of consumer-brand engagement (CBE). This study examines the role of CCI and CBI in driving the CBE's cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions, and their effect on consumers' behavioral intentions based on repurchase intention and ongoing search behavior. Data collected from 316 Malaysian consumers using a self-administrated online survey was analyzed using Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings demonstrate the importance of the two forms of CP in strengthening the CBE dimensions, revealing that the cognitive engagement is an influential driver of consumers' ongoing search behavior, while emotional engagement and behavioral engagement are significant predictors of consumers' repurchase intention. We provide meaningful implications for marketers to manage CP on social-media platforms.

Motivating participation in crowdsourcing contests: The role of instruction-writing strategy

Article

Apr 2022
INFORM MANAGE-AMSTER

Task instructions are seeker-generated content aiming to disclose information and persuade solvers to participate in crowdsourcing contests. There are various writing strategies for task instructions, with different levels of informativeness and persuasiveness for solvers. This work examines how requirement-oriented and reward-oriented strategies affect solver participation. The empirical results reveal a U-shaped relationship between the usage of restrictive words and the number of participants. In contrast, an inverted U-shaped relationship is found between terminology usage and participation. Emphasizing intrinsic and extrinsic rewards through issue-relevant information statements and emotional appeals also proves to be effective in motivating solvers’ involvement.

Customer participation in service innovation using SNS smartphone apps: an investigation of the Indian hotel service industry

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2021
Int J Emerg Market

Purpose Existing research lacks a comprehensive understanding of the individual factors that may transform an “ordinary” customer into an active participator in the service innovation process and/or the situational factors that determine a customer's participation in any stage of the service innovation process. The purpose of this paper is to fill these research gaps by developing and validating a conceptual framework on CPSIB in the Indian hotel industry by using smartphones to access SNS apps. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional survey design method was used in this study to collect representative samples with greater response rates. The target population included in this study were hotel guests of all of the star category hotels in New Delhi who had earlier experiences of staying in star category hotels. Structured questionnaire was formulated, which was later pre-tested to confirm its reliability and validity. Out of 400 questionnaires, 348 usable responses were obtained. Findings This research examines CPSIB in the Indian hotel industry using SNS smartphone apps. It confirms that user innovativeness and perceived trust in the service provider determine customers' participative service innovation behavior, which further results in positive adoption intention via SNS smartphone apps. Research limitations/implications This research provides valuable insights into the hotel industry, specifically in the context of India. However, it has a few limitations that must be taken into account when generalizing its results. Practical implications First, investigating the key antecedents and consequences of CPSIB has important implications for marketing practitioners. Moreover, it was observed that hotel guests with higher innovativeness and trust in the service provider would show positive participative service innovation behavior toward innovating new services along with the hotel service providers, which may result in a positive adoption intention toward the newly developed services. Second, hoteliers should integrate hotel guests into hotel service innovation via the use of SNS smartphone apps. Social implications This research conceptualizes that user innovativeness is a driving factor for CPSIB that may further generate a positive adoption intention toward newly developed services. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, only a very few studies have tested the interrelationships between individual factors and customer participation behavior in the mobile technology-mediated service ecosystem simultaneously. Furthermore, research examining the individual and situational factors influencing CPSIB and adoption intention towards newly developed services using SNS smartphone apps is still in a nascent stage.

Charting Platform Capitalism: Definitions, concepts and ideologies

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Full-text available

Feb 2022
NEW TECH WORK EMPLOY

The term ‘platform capitalism’ captures a dynamic set of new work modalities that are mediated by platforms and have been brought about through advances in Information and Communication Technologies, adjustments in consumption modes and preferences, and changes in how work is conceived. Beyond work-related changes, the ascent of platform capitalism reflects wider societal, political as well as economic changes. While research on platform capitalism and its manifold manifestations abounds, there is a lack of consensus in the literature regarding its key features and characteristics. Seeking to provide conceptual clarity and to contribute to efforts of theorisation, we here analyse four main facets of platform capitalism, namely crowdsourcing, sharing economy, gig economy and platform economy. We review key definitions of each term and provide an overview of their distinctive features. This allows us to identify both similarities and differences in the framing of these four terms. We also delve into the ideologies underlying these four terms, thus providing a critique of the neophilia characterising the discourse framing platform capitalism.

Cross-disciplinary Exploration of Communication Oriented Towards Customer (Non) Participation. A Case Study of the Preview Communities Platform hosted by the Swiss Federal Railway Operator (SBB)

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Sep 2020

Bruno Asdourian

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of the co-creation phenomenon in the context of virtual customer communities (VCCs), notably to provide insights into the motivations of customer participation and nonparticipation in such a virtual context. Empowered by the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, the relational paradigm of public relations and listening communication has become even more challenging with the customers' role of co-creators. Accordingly, organizations are creating distributed innovation models and virtual customer environments that enable them to establish a collaborative relationship with their customers, facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge, and integrate them in the value creation process as well as in product design, product testing, and product support activities. The following research question will guide this work: Why do customers voluntarily (not) participate in co-creation activities in firm-managed virtual customer communities? This research is built on an in-depth case study: the Preview Communities platform developed and managed by the Swiss federal railways operator (SBB). The main part of this research involved an online survey designed to explore the motives that prompt customer (non) participation in the Preview Communities. he results reveal that Identification, Learning and Hedonic factors are the most important drivers for participation. Further, the findings also provide insights into non-participants' motives for not contributing to the platform. They range from a lack of time to their needs being met by merely reading other users' content. Practical implications-Managers could develop a virtual environment fostering co-creation and maximizing the contribution likelihood of community members. Additionally, communicants could integrate these findings to address this issue appropriately and use/take advantage of the participation potential of passive customers. This paper develops recommendations for managers on how to improve customer participation by leveraging relevant triggers, as well as suggestions for reducing non-participation and stimulate their contributions in co-creation activities.

A Strategic Design Guideline for Open Business Models

Article

Sep 2020

To realize a competitive product-service system, a manufacturer is required to change its closed business model and develop open and sustainable alliances with external partners. As an alternative business model, an open business model (OBM) is a new concept, replacing the closed model, that is highly dependent on the company’s resources. An OBM is realized via resource sharing and collaboration with external partners. By incorporating an OBM in its operations, a company can receive several benefits, such as long-term profits, by providing new customer value and diversifying risks due to uncertainty in the market environment. A considerable number of studies related to this concept have been conducted. However, a practical method for OBM design remains unavailable. It is therefore difficult to design an OBM via actual design procedures. To this end, the purpose of this study is to support a design for OBMs. To achieve this, eight dimensions of openness in OBMs are first identified. On the basis of these dimensions, the requirements for an OBM design guideline are defined, and the design guideline is proposed. The proposed design guideline includes three steps: requirement analysis, OBM design, and validation. The proposed method was applied in an OBM design workshop, and the usefulness of the design guideline was verified through an evaluation of the eight openness dimensions. Finally, directions for improving the design guideline are discussed as future works.

A biclustering-based heterogeneous customer requirement determination method from customer participation in product development

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Full-text available

Feb 2022
ANN OPER RES

Timely identification of heterogeneous customer requirements serves as a vital step for a company to formulate product strategies to meet the diverse and changing needs of its customers. By relaxing the search for global patterns in classical clustering, we propose a biclustering-based method, BiHCR, to identify heterogeneous customer requirements from the perspective of local patterns detection. Specifically, conforming to customers’ attitudes toward products derived from customer participation, we first transform the original data matrix with customers as rows and customer requirements as columns into a binary matrix. Then, by combining the two significant biclustering algorithms, Bimax and RepBimax, we design BiHCR to identify the biclusters embedded in the binary matrix to improve the detection results from the larger biclusters and their overlaps. Furthermore, the empirical case of smartphone development in a Chinese company verifies that BiHCR can identify homogeneous subgroups of customers with similar requirements without redundant noise compared with Bimax. Additionally, in contrast to RepBimax, our proposed BiHCR can also detect the intractable overlapping biclusters in the binary matrix used to describe the heterogeneity of customer requirements. Since the process of customer participation in product development gradually became a dominant approach to collecting customer requirements information for many industries, a conceptual framework of customer requirements identification is constructed and the detailed steps are clarified for manufacturers.

Effects of transparent brand communication on perceived brand authenticity and consumer responses

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Full-text available

Dec 2020

Purpose This study aims to understand the effects of brands’ transparent communication (i.e. production transparency and cost transparency) on consumers’ perceptions of a brand’s perceived transparency and authenticity, as well as how such perceptions impact consumers’ attitude, trust and behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach Two between-participants factorial design experiments ( n = 176 for Study 1 and n = 169 for Study 2) were conducted to examine consumers’ responses to a brand’s cost transparency and production transparency. Findings The results revealed that transparency in the focal brand’s communication of production and cost would increase consumers’ perceptions of the brand’s transparency and authenticity because of its perceived information sensitivity. Such positive effects were found to similarly impact consumers’ attitude, trust and behavioral intention toward the brand. Practical implications The results point to the importance of brand transparency in marketing communication, specifically as it pertains to the influence that the inclusion of transparent cost and production information can have on consumers’ perceptions of authenticity, trust and attitude, as well as how these perceptions translate into behavioral intention. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to explore the differences between production transparency and cost transparency in influencing consumer responses and the underlying mechanisms. The findings also expand to the literature on brand transparency and brand authenticity.

Urban crowdsourcing: Stakeholder selection and dynamic knowledge flows in high and low complexity projects

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Mar 2021
IND MARKET MANAG

Urban crowdsourcing is a new form of open innovation that aims to develop smart cities. Due to the heterogeneity of partners in urban planning, knowing the type of knowledge gained from each stakeholder at each stage of the crowdsourcing process needs to be understood for effective collaborations and innovative knowledge flow activation. Using a qualitative approach with experts involved in the Casablanca Smart City project, this research investigates complex multi-stakeholder ecosystems. More specifically, this study identifies and examines the role of external stakeholders at each stage of the innovation process, and the resulting dynamic knowledge flows that help improve the process of urban crowdsourcing in the development of smart city solutions. Depending on the complexity of the innovation project, findings identify three primary stakeholders (citizens, public authorities, and private and public firms) and three secondary stakeholders (NGOs, universities, consulting companies). Results show at which of the four steps of urban crowdsourcing they intervene. Furthermore, the findings reveal a dynamic learning environment composed of two knowledge flows (“learning with” and “learning from” stakeholders).

Toward an Egyptian managerial framework based on crowdsourcing for open innovation

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2021

Purpose The purpose of the presented research paper is to explore the different aspects of crowdsourcing and its evolution over time. Supported by three different case studies, the research focuses on the different factors that affect crowdsourcing for open innovation. Moreover, the findings give us a proposed managerial framework to be considered when adopting crowdsourcing in addition to factors that proved its huge effect on crowdsourcing activities. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research approach for this research was the most convenient. It focuses on providing an in-depth understanding of the phenomena. Qualitative research represents the views and perspectives of the participants in a study besides it is driven by a desire to explain these events, through existing or emerging concepts (Yin, 2016). Adopting a case study research method that investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the “case”) in depth and within its real-world context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be evident (Yin, 2018) as in crowdsourcing based business model for open innovation. Findings The researchers presented the benefits and challenges when considering crowdsourcing establishing a managerial framework for open innovation. Additionally, the researchers identified the different factors that highly affect crowdsourcing proposing a model that can be used for adopting crowdsourcing. The research also presented insights about how crowdsourcing was introduced in the Egyptian market and how it evolved through the years. Research limitations/implications The study had some limitations to be considered in the following work. Company X used crowdsourcing within a high degree of limitations and confidentially consequently, restricting the effects and results of crowdsourcing. Another limitation was that the study has been only qualitative, and the addition of the quantitative approach will numerically support the findings. Moreover, the research depended on the businesses only as of the source of information and neglected the crowd sample. Practical implications The main aim of this study was to address the lack of research evidence on what it means to adopt crowdsourcing for open innovation in Egyptian firms. The authors have done so by adopting three case studies which enabled them to directly observe and report on the daily work of trust CEOs, with special attention to the practices. Whereby, these executives made themselves knowledgeable for all practical purposes, as dictated by their specific job. Accordingly, the first major contribution of the present research is that it provides much-needed empirical data on the actual practices of crowdsourcing in three Egyptian, yet international companies. Moreover, the results could be used as a guideline when considering crowdsourcing activities highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of such activities. Originality/value The paper discusses different perspectives of crowdsourcing presenting a new categorization for its types. Moreover, how these types have been used especially in the Egyptian market. On the other hand, the paper investigated and documented three different sized companies' experiences utilizing crowdsourcing for innovation. The collected information was used to suggest a new model by which companies can avoid the difficulties others had. Moreover, the research highlighted the benefits and challenges of using crowdsourcing for open innovation.

Co-creating E-commerce Last-mile Logistics with Consumers: A Conceptual Framework and Future Research Agenda

Chapter

Jan 2021

Increasingly, logistics industry offers innovative solutions that interact directly with end-consumers. Consumers are encouraged to participate in co-creating e-commerce last-mile logistics. Built on the synthesised insights from “consumer logistics” and the “value co-creation (VCC)” concept, this study proposes a conceptual framework of consumers’ involvement in last-mile logistics from a VCC perspective. This research study is based on a synthesised analysis of 52 peer-reviewed journal articles using Scopus of Elsevier and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of Thomson Reuters as search databases. It is found that consumers are empowered to influence specific changes in the service offerings, whereas logistics service providers accrue benefits by transferring part of the service obligations to consumers. Given the mutual benefits, the trend of VCC is expected to gain strong development in last-mile logistics. However, three major contingencies exist: (1) consumers’ resistance in adopting the innovation service concept of VCC; (2) the potential risk of exploitation and the associated concern about service fairness; and (3) a lack of a proper governance mechanism of the co-creation relationship. A conceptual framework along with four propositions is presented. Based on the conceptual insights, we further propose three emerging research fields that have great potential in generating interdisciplinary findings.

Consumer Involvement in Supply Networks: A Cubic Typology of C2B2C and C2B2B Business Models

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IND MARKET MANAG

Business models such as C2B and B2B2C, in which consumers get involved in companies' supply chains and business operations, are burgeoning in many industries. Academic research on the phenomenon is, however, lagging behind, and extant research has typically focused on just one or a few variants of such business models at a time. The present conceptual research addresses this research gap by developing a comprehensive typology that explicates and unpacks the full variety of consumer involvement types in supply networks of contemporary business models. The three-dimensional typology developed contributes to literature by identifying and integrating the relevant dimensions, which have been addressed in prior research only implicitly or in a piecemeal manner. This elucidates the full range and variety of the phenomenon to researchers. For managers, the three-dimensional, cubic typology offers a business development tool, facilitating the identification of altogether 56 alternative business models, wherein consumers may serve as suppliers of various inputs, including work, effort, and entrepreneurial activity; goods; platform goods; natural resources and energy; data, information, and knowledge; attention and presence; as well as money and capital.

The influence of intellectual property rights protection on contribution efforts of participants in online crowdsourcing contests

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COMPUT HUM BEHAV

Although crowdsourcing is ubiquitous, it is unclear what factors affect the quality of contributions by participants in crowdsourcing activities. This study attempts to understand the mechanism of how perceived intellectual property rights (IPR) protection influences participant's contribution effort in crowdsourcing contests by analyzing the mediating role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the moderating role of task complexity. For this purpose, data were collected through an online survey from members of a major crowdsourcing platform for seeking innovative solutions to problems across various industries. Partial least square based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is employed for analyzing the data. The results show the new findings that (1) both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence contribution effort and the effect of extrinsic motivation is stronger; (2) IPR protection does not influence the contribution efforts of participants directly but indirectly via extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation; (3) the importance of IPR protection holds irrespective of the gender of the participants and the complexity of the task. The results indicate that a one-time prize might be insufficient for the participants to exert their full efforts in crowdsourcing contests if the resulting IPRs are not protected.

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Social Media-Based Opinion Retrieval for Product Analysis Using Multi-Task Deep Neural Networks

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EXPERT SYST APPL

Social media platforms are considered one of the most effective intermediaries for companies to interact with consumers. Social media-based decision support systems for the marketing domain are highly developed, but product development and innovation-oriented studies remain limited. This study offers a novel approach which utilises opinion retrieval theme along with sentiment analysis to support the decision-making process for product analysis and development. To achieve this aim, we propose an end-to-end social media-based opinion retrieval system and utilise machine learning and natural language processing techniques. Google Glass is chosen as a use-case as this product was unable to achieve its commercial targets despite its superior technological offerings. We design a multi-task deep neural network architecture for the training of sentiment prediction and opinion detection tasks. We first divide the tweets containing certain useful opinions and suggestions into two categories based on their sentiment labels. The negative tweets are analysed to identify product-related concerns, whereas the positive and neutral tweets are used to extract innovative ideas and identify new use cases for product development. We visualise and interpret the clusters of keywords extracted from each sentiment label group . Apart from methodological contributions, this study offers practical contributions for the next generations of smart glasses.

Research Hotspots and Frontiers of Product R&D Management under the Background of the Digital Intelligence Era—Bibliometrics Based on Citespace and Histcite

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The rise of “cloud-computing, mobile-Internet, Internet of things, big-data, and smart-data” digital technology has brought a subversive revolution to enterprises and consumers’ traditional patterns. Product research and development has become the main battlefield of enterprise competition, facing an environment where challenges and opportunities coexist. Regarding the concepts and methods of product R&D projects, the domestic start was later than the international ones, and many domestic companies have also used successful foreign cases as benchmarks to innovate their management methods in practice. “Workers must first sharpen their tools if they want to do their jobs well”. This article will start from the relevant concepts of product R&D projects and summarize current R&D management ideas and methods. We combined the bibliometric analysis software Histcite and Citespace to sort out the content of domestic and foreign literature and explore the changing trends of research hotspots. Finally, combined with the analysis of confirmed cases in domestic masters and doctoral dissertations to test the theory, the literature review of the product R&D project management theme was carried out from the dual perspectives of comprehensive theory and practice. This study uses the core collection library of Web of Science as the object of document extraction. Based on the search conditions of “Product development” or “Intergrat* product development”, 8998 sample documents were initially retrieved. The search deadline was June 2019, with a time range from 2000 to June 2019. Then, using the record number of 50 as the critical condition, 5007 analysis samples were deleted, refined, and cleaned. Through the review and measurement of 5007 papers, the analysis showed that: (1) in the last ten years, sustainability, consumer focus, new approaches to product development management, and organizational design have become critical considerations in the product development process stage; (2) at this stage, researchers are paying more attention to the innovation, design, product development, identification, simultaneous engineering, consequence, and stage/gate model aspects of product development; and (3) factors such as long development cycles, high costs, and poor organizational design are now common problems in the product development process.

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Application Research: Big Data in Food Industry

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A huge amount of data is being produced in the food industry, but the application of big data—regulatory, food enterprise, and food-related media data—is still in its infancy. Each data source has the potential to develop the food industry, and big data has broad application prospects in areas like social co-governance, exploit of consumption markets, quantitative production, new dishes, take-out services, precise nutrition and health management. However, there are urgent problems in technology, health and sustainable development that need to be solved to enable the application of big data to the food industry.

Smart systems of innovation for smart places: Challenges in deploying digital platforms for co-creation and data-intelligence

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LAND USE POLICY

The effect of digital transformation towards more efficient, place-based and bottom-up innovation policies at different spatial scales has proven significant, as digital technologies modify existing policy-design routines in cities and regions. Smart places (cities, districts, neighbourhoods, ecosystems) depend on the way digitalisation disrupts systems of innovation in cities, making it more open, global, participatory and experimental. We argue that the rise and interconnection of various types of intelligence (artificial, human, collective) could bring profound changes in the way smart places are being created and evolve. In this context, cyber-physical systems of innovation are deployed through multiple nodes acquiring digital companions, collaboration is deployed over physical, social, and digital spaces, and actors can use complex methods guided by software and get insights from data and analytics. The paper also presents the case study of OnlineS3, a two-year Horizon 2020 project, which developed and tested a digital platform composed of applications, datasets and roadmaps, which altogether create a digital environment for empowering the design of smart specialisation strategies for local and regional systems of innovation. The results indicate that digital transformation allows the operationalisation of multiple methodologies which have not been used earlier by policy makers, due to lack of capabilities. It can also increase the scalability of indicators facilitating decision making at different spatial scales and, therefore, better respond to the complexity of innovation systems providing dynamic and scale-diverse information.

Otwarte innowacje i ich wykorzystanie w przedsiębiorstwach typu start-up

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Participation in the Crowdsourcing of Marketing Activities Using a Dynamic Approach

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Nasrin Mahavarpour

Analysis of a Stochastic Model for Crowdsourcing Using Map Arrivals and Phase Type Services

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APPL COMPUT MATH-BAK

In this paper, we model crowdsourcing using MAP for Type 1 arrivals who may opt to serve the other (Poisson type) arrivals. Such models are useful in service sectors wherein one type of customers visit the store to buy items while the other type may place orders over some medium such as internet and phone, and expects them to be delivered. The store management may use the (willing) in-store customers as couriers to “serve” the other type of customers. We study the model using matrix-analytic methods and discuss some qualitative illustrative examples.

Let us talk about something: The evolution of e-WOM from the past to the future

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J BUS RES

Because e-WOM is one of the useful digital marketing elements for any organization, a better understanding of its process will help individuals take more advantage of this concept. e-WOM enables individuals to form relationships with firms, brands, and other customers, which leads to benefits for both consumers and companies. It plays a significant role in a firm’s performance. The present study implements a different approach to reviewing by combining two bibliometric methods, multidimensional scaling analysis (MDS) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), via Bibexcel software to have a deeper investigation of the process. Considering the 468 journal papers on e-WOM allowed us to study the intellectual streams and significant perceptions underpinning e-WOM. By dividing the study timeframe into three periods, we realized that there have always been three main concepts in this field: consumer behavior, sales, and the tourism and hotel industry. Further, by proposing a framework, we have expanded these concepts accompanied by the role of artificial intelligence and robots in the process of e-WOM. Consequently, new concepts “r-WOM”, “automated user engagement”, and “smart selling” are introduced and demonstrated as a consequence of using technology-based tools in the process of e-WOM. Finally, the future scope of this field has been designed. We contribute to the literature by offering theoretical and managerial implications.

Visitation Rate Analysis of Geoheritage Features from Earth Science Education Perspective Using Automated Landform Classification and Crowdsourcing: A Geoeducation Capacity Map of the Auckland Volcanic Field, New Zealand

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The Relationship Between Crowdsourcing and Consumer Power

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Współpraca pomiędzy uczelniami jako element rozwoju potencjału konkurencyjnego

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The purpose of this article was to analyze the benefits, barriers and perspectives for the development of inter-school cooperation in Poland. A review of the literature on various forms of cooperation, competition and coopetition in the environment of higher educa- tion institutions as well as challenges connected with them were presented. Subsequently, pilot in-depth interviews with decision-makers from universities educating in social sciences were conducted and analyzed. The main conclusion is that cooperation between universities, in particular cooperation with a stronger partner, is considered to be beneficial. In practice, however, there are numerous barriers that make this cooperation very limited, mainly due to operating in conditions of competition for students and funds for scientific and research activities. Therefore, cooperation with a reputable foreign partner seems to be nowadays the most desirable form of cooperation.

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Evidence-based management (EBMgt) concerns making complex managerial decisions by combining the decision maker’s knowledge and experience with scientific knowledge. A major obstacle to this practice is the lack of support. In this paper, we employ design science to develop an ensemble of conceptual, information and IT artefacts that support EBMgt. The approach is instantiated and validated in a case study using a combination of methods, including proof of concept, laboratory experiment, satisfaction survey, and focus groups. The proposed approach turns EBMgt into a repeatable practice, supported by reusable tools, and brings some degree of automation to the process. To our knowledge, EBMgt services have not yet been realised in a concrete manner, and not with concrete empirical results. Therefore, this study provides a first-of-a-kind demonstration and assessment of the viability of EBMgt services.

Collecting Badges: Understanding the Gold Rush for Business Excellence Awards

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Feb 2022
Eur Manag Rev

Business excellence awards (BEAs) have become all too commonplace. Entering and winning one has now become part of contemporary organising. However, scholarly work examining these awards remains scattered, with the dominant narrative focusing on what could even be described as the intense obsession with award ceremonies. In this paper, we articulate the mechanisms through which the dual demands for managing competitive pressures and achieving competitive advantage drive organisations to enter these awards. In doing this, we integrate and expand upon prior work to explicate an integrative framework for examining how the interactions between various contextual and environmental factors may induce organisations to enter BEAs, and the potential outcomes, particularly for those who win or are shortlisted for these awards. We go on to present a set of propositions constituting a contribution, after which our study’s implications for the theory and practice of BEAs are outlined.

Designing Crowdsolving Ba: A Closer Look at the Features of Crowdsolving Platforms to Manage Organizational Knowledge

Article

Mar 2022
INFORM MANAGE-AMSTER

This conceptual article contains a proposed four-part categorization of crowdsolving platform features: contest, idea, participant, and community. A related conceptual framework depicts the relationships of these features with the outcomes of creating, transferring, and assimilating knowledge for the platform and its client firms, according to the socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (SECI) model. Arguments based in Social Capital Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, and Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory inform the predictions about the spiral of interactions between explicit and tacit knowledge that occurs during a contest on a crowdsolving platform. The findings suggest ways to design a crowdsolving ba (shared space for creativity) and platform-level absorptive capacity. For platform managers, this study also offers new insights into the important decisions they must make to develop their platforms’ features.

Investigating the role of crowdsourcing in improving the quality of production processes: a systematic literature review

Article

Mar 2022

Purpose In recent years, crowdsourcing – an open and innovative model for outsourcing tasks to a crowd – has become popular for production processes, allowing organizations and firms in different industries to access external skills and expertise efficiently. Companies have opened their innovation processes to crowds outside their boundaries, and users and customers are often involved in developing products in line with market needs. This work aims to investigate the link between crowdsourcing, production and quality to better understand this new interesting phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach An explicit and systematic method for reviewing the literature was used. Through the selection and analysis of the relevant articles in the field, this paper presents a comprehensive overview of the pros and cons, risks and opportunities, disadvantages, or concerns, as addressed in the literature, for the adoption of crowdsourcing in the production processes. Findings It identifies where, how and to what extent crowdsourcing can be applied profitably within the production of products and services, highlighting how crowdsourcing could affect product and process quality. Finally, some directions for future research are outlined from the analysis conducted. Originality/value This work applied the systematic literature review to investigate and evaluate the actual use and impact of crowdsourcing on the production process, focusing on quality enhancement contribution.

A development of strategic design tool for open business modelオープンビジネスモデルの戦略的設計支援ツールの開発

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

The market circumstances around the manufacturing companies have changed due to several factors, including globalization, commoditization, and advanced innovation. This condition triggers the manufacturing companies to reconsider the competitive advantage of their value propositions and to promote their change not only their product but their closed business models. In regard to these circumstances, Open Business Model (OBM) is attracting attention as a new concept that replaces the closed business model which depends on the company’s own resources. OBM is a business model realized by sharing resources and collaborating with external partners. If the companies can transform their business model to OBM, they can receive several benefits such as long-term profits through providing new customer value, diversifying risks due to uncertainty in the market environment, and shortening the development period for products and services. Responding to this expectation to OBM, many researchers make a study related to this concept. However, existing research on OBM is limited to its advantages and comparison with similar concepts. Thus, it is difficult to design OBM in actual design activities. For this background, this study aims to support OBM design with high openness and proposes a design tool composed of the design templates and the procedure to use them. A proposed tool was applied to the OBM design workshop, and the application result confirmed usefulness and direction for improvement of this tool.

Motivation and sustained participation in the online crowdsourcing community: the moderating role of community commitment

Article

Sep 2020
INTERNET RES

Purpose Crowdworkers' sustained participation is critical to the success and sustainability of the online crowdsourcing community. However, this issue has not received adequate attention in the information systems research community. This study seeks to understand the formation of crowdworker sustained participation in the online crowdsourcing community. Design/methodology/approach The research model was empirically tested using online survey data from 212 crowdworkers in a leading online crowdsourcing community in China. Findings The empirical results provide several key findings. First, there are two different types of sustained participation: continuous participation intention (CPI) and increased participation intention (IPI). Second, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation positively influence crowdworker CPI and IPI. Third, community commitment negatively moderates the effects of extrinsic motivation on CPI and IPI, while it positively moderates the effects of intrinsic motivation on CPI and IPI. Originality/value This study has significant implications for research on online crowdsourcing community and provides practical guidance for formulating persuasive measures to promote crowdworker sustained participation in the community.

Research opportunities in the study of B2B new ventures: Perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature

Article

Oct 2020
IND MARKET MANAG

Mark E. Parry

The goal of this article is to identify research opportunities for scholars interested in B2B new ventures. The author focuses on opportunities that arise from a consideration of three important topics in the entrepreneurship literature: business model development, venture legitimacy, and top management teams. It is argued that significant opportunities exist for research that expands our understanding of (1) entrepreneurial paths from initial means to a fully specified business model, (2) the design of a portfolio of legitimation strategies, and (3) the impact of top management team characteristics and processes on venture characteristics, venture performance, and top management team outcomes.

Effective creative crowdsourcing: A multi‐dimensional evaluation framework

Article

Apr 2022

Effective creative crowdsourcing has mainly been investigated based on effective idea generation and selection management, but other dimensions of effective crowdsourcing (i.e., successful implementation and communication of ideas) have gained little attention so far. While most research has focused on idea generation as an outcome, this research highlights the outcome variety of using creative crowdsourcing techniques. The results present an evaluative framework of effective crowdsourcing and identify its drivers at each stage of the crowdsourcing process. The results contribute to an extended evaluation framework of creative crowdsourcing practices.

Solvers' committed resources in crowdsourcing marketplace: do task design characteristics matter?

Article

Mar 2021

It has become pervasive in the contemporary world that organisations leverage crowdsourcing to solicit ideas or innovations from the public. However, challenges exist in how to design tasks in an appropriate way to stimulate crowdsourcees' investing more resources in crowdsourcing activities. Motivated thus, draw on the valence theory, we propose a model to explain the influence of task design characteristics on solvers' committed resources with the consideration of the mediating role of task difficulty-significance factors. The model was assessed by using data collected from 274 crowdsourcees on two large Chinese crowdsourcing platforms. As hypothesised, crowdsourcing type, deadline, task incentives and task volume are found to positively affect perceived task significance, whereas crowdsourcing type and deadline negatively impact perceived task difficulty, personality has an indirect impact on perceived task significance by effectively enhancing solvers' positive traits and alleviating their vulnerable attitudes. In addition, we find that perceived task significance partially mediates the effect of task design and committed resources, while perceived task difficulty mediates the associations between crowdsourcing type, deadline and committed resource. The theoretical contributions and practical implications are also discussed.

I know what you are thinking: How theory of mind is employed in product evaluations

Article

May 2021
J BUS RES

The current research examines how the social processing capability of theory of mind (i.e., ToM; the ability to understand others’ intentions) is employed when evaluating potentially persuasive marketing communications. Specifically, Study 1 reveals that ToM negatively influences product evaluations, as mediated by advertising skepticism. Study 2 replicates these findings with a company’s customer database. Study 3 manipulates advertisement transparency, showing that highly transparent communications reduce skepticism and increase product evaluations. Lastly, Study 4 examines boundary conditions, revealing that ToM influences product evaluations more so in evaluation of marketing communications for publicly versus privately consumed products.

Exploring the determinants of university students’ contribution intention on crowdsourcing platforms: a value maximization perspective

Article

Feb 2021
INTERACT LEARN ENVIR

Crowdsourcing is an emerging web-enabled method to gain external expertise and ideas on tasks or projects. Mass contributions from the crowd are the key to the success and effectiveness of crowdsourcing. University students are important potential users and promising sources of contributions in the crowdsourcing context. However, little is known about the factors that shape university students’ intention to participate in this new web frontier. Thus, the current study investigates the determinants of university students’ contribution intention on crowdsourcing platforms. Based on the value-based adoption model (VAM) and crowdsourcing characteristics, this study develops a model to understand the determinants of university students’ intention to contribute ideas and solutions on crowdsourcing platforms. Data collected from 135 university students in Taiwan were tested against the research model using the partial least squares (PLS) method. The results indicate that perceived value and perceived behavioral control are key determinants of university students’ contribution intention on crowdsourcing platforms, and that reputation, perceived enjoyment, task autonomy, and trust are significant factors affecting perceived value. This study contributes to extend the knowledge regarding how to better promote crowdsourcing contributions, as well as how to foster and encourage university students to participate in crowdsourcing activities.

Crowdsourcing als neuartige Form der Arbeitsorganisation und des Innovierens

Chapter

Sep 2021

Christian Papsdorf

Der Artikel widmet sich der Frage, inwiefern Crowdsourcing eine Innovation ist. Es wird erstens gezeigt, dass im Rahmen von Crowdwork die Organisation bestimmter Arbeitsprozesse, vor allem hinsichtlich der Zusammensetzung der Erwerbstätigen, der Arbeitsinhalte, der Steuerungs- und Kontrollmechanismen, der Flexibilität und der Gratifikation, erneuert wird. Zweitens weichen crowdsourcing-basierte Innovationen hinsichtlich der beteiligten Akteure, des Anwendungsfeldes, der Entscheidungsmechanismen und des Resultates von klassischen Varianten ab.

CrowdAct: Achieving High-Quality Crowdsourced Datasets in Mobile Activity Recognition

Article

Mar 2021

In this study, we propose novel gamified active learning and inaccuracy detection for crowdsourced data labeling for an activity recognition system using mobile sensing (CrowdAct). First, we exploit active learning to address the lack of accurate information. Second, we present the integration of gamification into active learning to overcome the lack of motivation and sustained engagement. Finally, we introduce an inaccuracy detection algorithm to minimize inaccurate data. To demonstrate the capability and feasibility of the proposed model in realistic settings, we developed and deployed the CrowdAct system to a crowdsourcing platform. For our experimental setup, we recruited 120 diverse workers. Additionally, we gathered 6,549 activity labels from 19 activity classes by using smartphone sensors and user engagement information. We empirically evaluated the quality of CrowdAct by comparing it with a baseline using techniques such as machine learning and descriptive and inferential statistics. Our results indicate that CrowdAct was effective in improving activity accuracy recognition, increasing worker engagement, and reducing inaccurate data in crowdsourced data labeling. Based on our findings, we highlight critical and promising future research directions regarding the design of efficient activity data collection with crowdsourcing.

L’expérience de contribution non monétaire

Thesis

Dec 2021

Erwan Joud

L'objet de recherche de ce travail doctoral se situe dans le courant de recherche sur la prosommation (Toffler, 1980 ; Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010), là où l'individu n'est pas tout à fait un consommateur et n'est pas non plus intégré dans un système de production institué (Graeber, 2011). La thèse poursuivie a comme objectif de décrire un phénomène qui n'est que très peu étudié par la littérature, y compris en marketing. La contribution non monétaire peut se définir comme l'action libre consistant à apporter une part personnelle à une oeuvre commune avec comme motivation intrinsèque de vivre une expérience positive. Pour parvenir à construire ce concept, cette thèse mobilise la méthode des entretiens d'explicitation (Vermersch, 2010, 2012), puis une double analyse, l'une phénoménologique, l'autre s'appuyant sur les travaux autour de l'expérience optimale et des motivations émergentes de Csikszentmihalyi et Nakamura (2014).

Food fraud countermeasures and consumers: A future agenda

Chapter

Jan 2022

Jan Mei Soon

Food fraud is an old but also recurring problem. It has re-emerged as a major risk to consumers with both food safety and food quality concerns. The approach to address food fraud differs from traditional food safety threats, as fraud is not readily predicted by using traditional food safety risk assessments and intervention strategies. The key to prevent food fraud is the development of countermeasures including assessment, data and predictive analytics, deterrence, detection, and where possible prevent food fraud from occurring in the first place. The countermeasures will ultimately influence an individual’s (fraudster) motivation to conduct food fraud. In addition to food safety/food crime authorities, researchers, and the food industry, the consumers will play a significant role in mitigating food fraud, as consumers become more aware and receptive of smartphone-based apps to determine food authenticity. This chapter summarizes the current trends in food fraud countermeasures and the role of consumers in mitigating food fraud in the future.

How can I signal my quality to emerge from the crowd? A study in the crowdsourcing context

Article

Mar 2022
TECHNOL FORECAST SOC

Crowdsourcing contests are characterized by an intensive level of competition because of the extensive number of solvers that voluntarily self-select to participate in such contests. This study aims at understanding how solvers can signal their quality attributes through the community functionalities, i.e. the online profile and the discussion blog of the crowdsourcing platform, to improve their chances of winning crowdsourcing contests. Drawing on signaling theory, we hypothesize that signaling their skills and capabilities by crafting profiles rich in personal and professional information and by participating actively within the discussion blog by posting and commenting, solvers can influence their success in crowdsourcing contests. To empirically test the developed hypotheses, we built an ad-hoc dataset based on a sample of 2479 solvers within the community of the 99designs crowdsourcing platform. We found that crafting a detailed and informative profile has a positive impact on the success of solvers. Moreover, our results highlight a curvilinear relationship between the solvers posting and commenting activity within the discussion blog and their success. The results of this study offer important contributions to previous crowdsourcing literature and provide critical implications for solvers, seekers and contest organizers of crowdsourcing contests.

Application of Artificial Intelligence in New Product Development: Innovative Cases of Crowdsourcing

Chapter

Jan 2022

Model Bisnis Pada Era Industri 4.0

Chapter

Full-text available

Oct 2021

Aditya Wardhana

Plattform industri 4.0 mengacu pada jaringan mesin cerdas dan proses industri dengan bantuan teknologi informasi dan komunikasi. Dengan cara ini, produk dan alat produksi dapat terhubung ke jaringan dan dapat berinteraksi yang memungkinkan cara produksi baru, penciptaan nilai, dan pengoptimalan waktu secara tepat (real time). Industri 4.0 menekankan pada penggunaan IoT dan komponen lainnya seperti cloud computing dan cloud platforms, big data seperti advanced data analytics, data lakes, edge intelligence yang terhubung dengan kecerdasan artifisial (artificial intelligence), analisis data, kemampuan penghitungan dan penyimpanan data dengan jaringan (edge computing), mobile, teknologi jaringan atau komunikasi data, perubahan beberapa bentuk HMI dan SCADA, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) menjadi cloud-based MES, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) menjadi i-ERP, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) dan AI engines machine learning

Consumer/user/customer integration in Supply Chain Management: a review and bibliometric analysis

Article

Oct 2021

Justine Marty

The integration of actors into Supply Chain Management (SCM) is currently becoming more and more crucial. All actors, including suppliers, manufacturers, customers, consumers and users have a role to play in the company’s performance. Customers, consumers and users have become major actors in the Supply Chain (SC). Their active integration into the SCM is becoming a new challenge for companies. This article aims to take stock of what has been done on the integration of customers, consumers, and users in SCM, in the literature, and to propose future avenues of research. A bibliometric analysis is conducted to study the integration of downstream actors. The analysis provides details on the most cited articles, published authors and influential journals using Bibexcel, and then Gephi is used to create a network. This article first proposes a quantitative analysis of the literature by highlighting the best authors, articles and journals on the integration of downstream actors in SCM. Subsequently, a network analysis reveals five clusters and the challenges to come. Finally, we suggest how and to what end these actors might be integrated. This bibliometric analysis proposes to explore this subject in depth, by identifying key research topics such as sustainability and information systems, interrelations and the evolution of publications over time.

Boosting creativity in co-creation with consumers in the fuzzy front-end of new product development: A literature review and organising framework

Article

Jul 2022

Mieszko Olszewski

Interest in consumer co-creation in the fuzzy front-end of the new product development (NPD) process has increased in recent years. It is generally acknowledged that integrating consumers into collaborative idea generation leverages the potential of social interactions, knowledge sharing and collective creativity, and it may improve the success of NPD. Despite extensive literature on value co-creation, little is known about how creativity can be enhanced and encouraged in this process. Based on a thorough literature review, the author develops an organising framework and six propositions on how creativity can be stimulated at the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process. By exploring the relevant literature, this study extends the understanding of the role that creativity plays in co-creation for NPD and provides some guidelines that may help boost the creative output and interest in co-creation activities during the development stage of an idea.

Service-Dominant Logic” Continuing the Evolution

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2008

Since the introductory article for what has become known as the “service-dominant (S-D) logic of marketing,” “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” was published in the Journal of Marketing (Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004a)), there has been considerable discussion and elaboration of its specifics. This article highlights and clarifies the salient issues associated with S-D logic and updates the original foundational premises (FPs) and adds an FP. Directions for future work are also discussed. KeywordsService-dominant logic-New-dominant logic-Service

Managing brands and customer engagement in online brand communities

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2013
J SERV MANAGE

Purpose – Given the dramatic technology‐led changes that continue to take place in the marketplace, researchers and practitioners alike are keen to understand the emergence and implications of online brand communities (OBCs). The purpose of this paper is to explore OBCs from both consumer and company perspectives. Design/methodology/approach – The study provides a synthesis of the extant OBC literature to further our understanding of OBCs, and also puts forth future priorities for OBC research. Findings – A conceptual framework is provided that extends our understanding of OBCs and consumer engagement. Four key OBC dimensions (brand orientation, internet‐use, funding and governance) are identified and three antecedents (brand‐related, social and functional) are proposed of consumer‐OBC engagement. Originality/value – This study is the first to explore key dimensions of OBCs, and the differing but related perspectives of the consumers and organizations involved.

Putting Consumers to Work: `Co-creation` and new marketing govern-mentality

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2008
J Consum Cult

Co-creation is a new paradigm that has captured the imagination of marketing and management professionals and scholars. Drawing on Foucault's notion of government and neo-Marxist theories of labor and value, we critically interrogate the cultural, social, and economic politics of this new management technique. We suggest that co-creation represents a political form of power aimed at generating particular forms of consumer life at once free and controllable, creative and docile. We argue that the discourse of value co-creation stands for a notion of modern corporate power that is no longer aimed at disciplining consumers and shaping actions according to a given norm, but at working with and through the freedom of the consumer. In short, administering consumption in ways that allow for the continuous emergence and exploitation of creative and valuable forms of consumer labor is the true meaning of the concept of co-creation.

From relationships to partnerships - New forms of cooperation between buyer and seller

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2006
IND MARKET MANAG

An increased focus on operational performance and the reliance on fewer suppliers by industrial customers call for a higher quality of buyer–seller relationships.This article elaborates on economic explanations for value generated partnerships and describes the distinctive qualities of partnerships as something more than ordinary customer relationships. Particular attention is paid to the managerial implications and pitfalls awaiting companies when pursuing a partnership approach and a definition of vertical partnerships is provided.

Mapping Consumer Power: An Integrative Framework for Marketing and Consumer Research

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2006
EUR J MARKETING

Purpose To help shape a more cohesive research program in marketing and consumer research, this paper presents a systematic effort to integrate current research on consumer empowerment with highly influential theories of power. A conceptual overview of power consisting of three dominant theoretical models is developed onto which is mapped existing consumer empowerment research. Design/methodology/approach A synthetic review focuses on three perspectives of consumer power: consumer sovereignty, cultural power and discursive power, drawing from sociological, philosophical and economic literature. These models are then applied to consumer research to illuminate research applications and insights. Findings Research of consumer empowerment has grown significantly over the last decade. Yet, researchers drawing from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions have generated a multitude of heuristic simplifications and mid‐level theories of power to inform their empirical and conceptual explorations. This review helps clarify consumer empowerment, and offers a useful map for future research. Research limitations/implications Researchers in consumer empowerment need to understand the historical development of power, and to contextualize research within conflicting perspectives on empowerment. Originality/value The paper makes several contributions: organizes a currently cluttered field of consumer empowerment research, connects consumer and marketing research to high‐level theorizations of power, and outlines specific avenues for future research.

Managing the trade-off between relationships and value networks. Towards a value-based approach of customer relationship management in business-to-business markets

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2004
IND MARKET MANAG

Michael Ehret

The management of buyer–seller relationships was an early antecedent to the development of customer relationship management (CRM) concepts. Currently, CRM concepts are being challenged by the rise of value networks. Value networks can and, often, do interfere with customer relationships and thereby call for a broader range of concepts to analyze and understand relationship management and the influence of value networks on relationships. This introductory article describes the nature of the problem between relationships and value networks, reviews the current state of research, and describes the contributions of the articles presented in this special issue on CRM in business-to-business markets.

Value Fusion: The Blending of Consumer and Firm Value in the Distinct Context of Mobile Technologies and Social Media

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2013
J SERV MANAGE

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of Value Fusion to describe how value can emerge from the use of mobile, networked technology by consumers, firms, and entities such as non-consumers, a firm's competitors, and others simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach - The paper discusses the combination of characteristics of mobile devices that enable Value Fusion and discusses specific value and benefits to consumers and firms of being mobile and networked. Value Fusion is introduced and defined and set apart from related, other conceptualizations of value. Examples are provided of Value Fusion and the necessary conditions for Value Fusion to occur are discussed. Also discussed are the conditions under which the use of mobile, networked technology by consumers and firms may lead to Value Confusion instead of Value Fusion. Several research questions are proposed to further enhance the understanding and management of Value Fusion. Findings - The combination of portable, personal, networked, textual/visual and converged characteristics of mobile devices enables firms and consumers to interact and communicate, produce and consume benefits, and create value in new ways that have not been captured by popular conceptualizations of value. These traditional conceptualizations include customer value, experiential value, customer lifetime value, and customer engagement value. Value Fusion is defined as value that can be achieved for the entire network of consumers and firms simultaneously, just by being on the mobile network. Value Fusion results from producers and consumers: individually or collectively; actively and passively; concurrently; interactively or in aggregation contributing to a mobile network; in real time; and just-in-time. Originality/value - This paper synthesizes insights from the extant value literature that by and large has focused on either the customer's or the firm's perspective, but rarely blended the two.

Beyond Traditional Word-of-Mouth: An Expanded Model of Customer-Driven Influence

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2013
J SERV MANAGE

Purpose – Business and academia alike have become aware of the crucial role of customer‐to‐customer interactions. Facilitated by the increasing customer connectedness through online media possibilities, companies need to understand how customers influence each other and how to manage these customer interactions. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize an expanded model of customer‐driven influence (CDI) that presents an overview of the influence process and its determinants. The model covers important issues, such as deliberate versus unintentional sender actions, verbal and non‐verbal communication, and reflective and impulsive receiver reactions. Design/methodology/approach – This article is the result of the first Thought Leadership Conference on Service Marketing, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, June 2012. Findings – The model shows the importance of considering goal theory in studying customer‐driven influence. Both sender and receiver can act and react in deliberate and unintentional ways. The mechanisms for customer‐driven influence are then contingent upon which particular goal (combination) is activated. Message reception is either verbal or non‐verbal. Furthermore, the receiver can react either by reflective processing or by impulsive processing leading to liking a particular product or wanting the product (respectively). Accordingly, the receiver builds behavioral intentions of purchasing and further talking about the particular product. Originality/value – This paper synthesizes insights from the extant literature on word‐of‐mouth, social influence, and dual processing of information to develop a comprehensive model customer‐driven influence. The authors' framework is embedded in goal system theory, as it addresses fundamental self‐regulatory issues, such as the impact of implicit goal activation and essential contextual factors on preference formation and choice.

Reliability Measures for Qualitative Data: Theory and Implications

Article

Full-text available

Feb 1994

Data based on qualitative judgments are prevalent in both academic research in marketing and applied marketing research. Reliability measurement of qualitative data is important to determine the stability and quality of the data obtained. The authors assume a decision theoretic loss function, formally model the loss to the researcher of using wrong judgments, and show how this produces a new, proportional reduction in loss (PRL) reliability measure that generalizes many existing quantitative and qualitative measures. Because the PRL measure is often cumbersome to compute directly, they provide reference tables that enable the researcher to apply their approach easily. They then use this new approach to explore several important practical issues in conducting marketing research with qualitative judgments. In particular, they address the issues of (1) how reliable qualitative data should be (extending directly from Nunnally's rule of thumb for Cronbach's alpha in quantitative measurement), (2) how many judges are necessary given a known proportion of agreement between judges, and (3) given a fixed number of judges, what proportion of agreement must be obtained to ensure adequate reliability.

Towards a characterization of crowdsourcing practices

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2011

The word Crowdsourcing –a compound contraction of Crowd and Outsourcing, was used by Howe in order to define outsourcing to the crowd. Beyond cost, benefits for the company can be substantial. It can externalize the risk of failure and it only pays for products or services that meet its expectations. The Crowdsourcing phenomenon covers heterogeneous situations and it has inspired a number of authors. However, we are still lacking a general and synthetic view of this concept. The aim of our work is to characterize Crowdsourcing in its various aspects. First we define of Crowdsourcing, and provide examples that illustrate the diversity of Crowdsourcing practices and we present similarities and differences between Crowdsourcing and established theories (Open Innovation, User Innovation and Open Source Software). Then, we propose and illustrate a typology of Crowdsourcing practices based on two criteria: the integrative or selective nature of the process and the type of tasks that are crowd sourced (simple, complex and creative tasks). In either case, the client firm seeks to mobilize external competencies. Relying upon the crowd can be an adequate method, because of its unique characteristics that are fostered by the Internet. Finally, we present some potential benefits and pitfalls of Crowdsourcing. JEL Codes: O32, L17, L24, L29, M19

Leveraging Crowdsourcing: Activation-Supporting Components for IT-Based Ideas Competition

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2009
J MANAGE INFORM SYST

Ideas competitions appear to be a promising tool for crowdsourcing and open innovation processes, especially for business-to-business software companies. Active participation of potential lead users is the key to success. Yet a look at existing ideas competitions in the software field leads to the conclusion that many information technology (IT)--based ideas competitions fail to meet requirements upon which active participation is established. The paper describes how activation-enabling functionalities can be systematically designed and implemented in an IT-based ideas competition for enterprise resource planning software. We proceeded to evaluate the outcomes of these design measures and found that participation can be supported using a two-step model. The components of the model support incentives and motives of users. Incentives and motives of the users then support the process of activation and consequently participation throughout the ideas competition. This contributes to the successful implementation and maintenance of the ideas competition, thereby providing support for the development of promising innovative ideas. The paper concludes with a discussion of further activation-supporting components yet to be implemented and points to rich possibilities for future research in these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolving to a New Dominant Logic

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2004
J MARKETING

Marketing inherited a model of exchange from economics, which had a dominant logic based on the exchange of "goods," which usually are manufactured output. The dominant logic focused on tangible resources, embedded value, and transactions. Over the past several decades, new perspectives have emerged that have a revised logic focused on intangible resources, the cocreation of value, and relationships. The authors believe that the new per- spectives are converging to form a new dominant logic for marketing, one in which service provision rather than goods is fundamental to economic exchange. The authors explore this evolving logic and the corresponding shift in perspective for marketing scholars, marketing practitioners, and marketing educators.

The Difficulties involved in Developing Business Models open to Innovation Communities: the Case of a Crowdsourcing Platform

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2010

Recent literature on open innovation suggests that firms can improve their performance by “opening” their business models, in other words, they can reduce their R&D costs by incorporating external knowledge. This implies that firms will be able to capture value through knowledge produced outside the organization. This, however, presents a number of difficulties notably where the knowledge produced is the result of collective creativity carried out by communities of peers. Here, tension can arise when some of the business actors involved take, or attempt to obtain, financial benefit from part of the value created by the online communities. The purpose of this article is to address the following research question: what are the main strategic difficulties encountered by firms whose business models rely on public web communities to create value? Our study used a collaborative research approach, and our empirical data is based on the longitudinal strategic analysis of a web start-up, CrowdSpirit, a collaborative web-based platform which enables communities to imagine and design innovative products. Our research highlights three main points that need to be addressed in further research on open business models. First, we highlight the fact that the ‘openness' of the business model to online communities leads to the development of a multi-level incentive model adapted to the different profiles of the various contributors. Second, we suggest that crowdsourcing platforms act as intermediaries in multi-sided markets and, as such, are at the core of a knowledge-sharing and IP transfer process between multiple actors. Finally, we suggest that the business model design and development can be considered as an ongoing learning process.

Customer-Integrated Business Models: A Theoretical Framework

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2010

Over the last few years, firms have involved their customers increasingly in different goods- and services-related processes (design, production, delivery, etc.). A corollary of this trend towards increasing integration of the customer has been new organizational choices aimed at generating higher margins, either by increasing revenues or by reducing costs. In other words, thinking about the ways in which the customer can and should be mobilized has mirrored fundamental changes in business models (BMs). However, the academic literature on the BM concept has remained relatively scarce so far (Demil & Lecocq, 2008). In particular, it seems that no study has thus far tackled the issue of customer participation in the BM. Customer participation has been the focus of much research in the field of services marketing and management. This literature considers the customer as an active player, going beyond traditional perspectives of the customer as a mere buyer Still, the customer’s impact on the firm’s ability to generate revenues, and thus on the firm’s BM, remains unknown. This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for the way in which firms can and should integrate their customers into their BM. Combining BM and customer participation literatures, we develop a theoretical framework for what we label the “Customer-Integrated Business Model” (CIBM), a generic BM based on customer participation. Our model relies on the RCOV (Resources and Competences, Organization, Value Proposition) of Demil & Lecocq, 2010. In a CIBM, the customer is considered as a resource. This has significant consequences, both on the two other components (Value Proposition and Organization) and on the interrelations between the three parts of the model. We exemplify this theoretical framework with two case studies based on secondary data. We conclude by addressing the potential limitations of CIBM.

Brand Community

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2001

This article introduces the idea of brand community. A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Grounded in both classic and contemporary sociology and consumer behavior, this article uses ethnographic and computer mediated environment data to explore the characteristics, processes, and particularities of three brand communities (those centered on Ford Bronco, Macintosh, and Saab). These brand communities exhibit three traditional markers of community: shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility. The commercial and mass-mediated ethos in which these communities are situated affects their character and structure and gives rise to their particularities. Implications for branding, sociological theories of community, and consumer behavior are offered. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.

The importance of a strategic approach to open innovation

Article

Jan 2011

B. Kelley

What Is Open Innovation?

Article

Jan 2011

Julian Loren

What is crowdsourcing?

Article

Jan 2011

R. Hopkins

Co-production and its effects on service innovation

Article

Nov 2011
IND MARKET MANAG

This study explores the influence of business-to-business (i.e., upstream) co-production on service innovation in the information technology (IT) industry, and examines the antecedents of co-production, based on a survey of sales managers, the seller side of the co-producers, from 157 IT businesses in Taiwan. The findings indicate that co-production positively influences service innovation to a degree that depends on the collaborative partner's compatibility and history of business relations, affective commitment, and expertise. Moreover, the business' innovation orientation enhances (moderates) the relationship between co-production and service innovation. These results have several managerial implications. Businesses should choose co-production partners that are compatible and can contribute toward advancing the relationship. Furthermore, investments in building their innovation orientation will strengthen their efforts in service innovation through co-production.

Strategic Development of Business Models: Implications of the Web 2.0 for Creating Value on the Internet

Article

Apr 2010
LONG RANGE PLANN

There is virtually a consensus that, to remain competitive, firms must continuously develop and adapt their business models. However, relatively little is known about how managers can go about achieving this transformation, and how, and to what extent, different types of business models should be adapted. To illustrate the differential effect of environmental changes on different business model types, this article draws from the ‘4C’ Internet business model typology to elaborate on how a recent wave of changes on the Internet – the emergent Web 2.0 phenomenon – is affecting each of its four business model types. We argue that Web 2.0 trends and characteristics are changing the rules of the ‘create and capture value’ game, and thus significantly disrupt the effectiveness of established Internet business models. Since systematic empirical knowledge about Web 2.0 factors is very limited, a comprehensive Web 2.0 framework is developed, which is illustrated with two cases and verified through in-depth interviews with Internet business managers. Strategic recommendations on how to what extent different Web 2.0 aspects affect each business model type are developed. Executives can use the ideas and frameworks presented in the article to benchmark their firm's efforts towards embracing the changes associated with the Web 2.0 into their business model.

Consumer resistance: A conceptual overview

Article

Jan 1993
Adv Consum Res

A Strategic Framework for Customer Relationship Management

Article

Oct 2005
J MARKETING

In this article, the authors develop a conceptual framework for customer relationship management (CRM) that helps broaden the understanding of CRM and its role in enhancing customer value and, as a result, shareholder value. The authors explore definitional aspects of CRM, and they identify three alternative perspectives of CRM. The authors emphasize the need for a cross-functional, process-oriented approach that positions CRM at a strate-gic level. They identify five key cross-functional CRM processes: a strategy development process, a value creation process, a multichannel integration process, an information management process, and a performance assessment process. They develop a new conceptual framework based on these processes and explore the role and function of each element in the framework. The synthesis of the diverse concepts within the literature on CRM and rela-tionship marketing into a single, process-based framework should provide deeper insight into achieving success with CRM strategy and implementation.

Individual customers' use and integration of resources: Empirical findings and organizational implications in the context of value co-creation

Article

Feb 2011
IND MARKET MANAG

This article addresses the call for empirical work to contribute to the ongoing critique of service-dominant (S-D) logic, and for an assessment of its potential reach to practitioners. It examines the appropriateness of a model of the resource-based view of consumers in an organizational context — the British Library (BL) — and concludes that the model can be adapted to include individual customers with varying motivations (personal/business) for using the BL's services. A detailed analysis of individual customer's operant resources (enabled through access to 565 messages posted to a BL user support forum) provided a different lens through which the organization could consider strategies to support value co-creation. The outcomes, from a collaborative research process, with executives and senior managers of BL, suggest that a sub-division of customer operant resources into physical, cultural and social has empirical support and managerial relevance, and that a focus on individual customer resources can provide insights into how to manage co-creation of value.

Using Strategy to Change Your Business Model

Article

Jun 2004

George Yip

Business models rose to prominence in the dot-com boom. Their usefulness may not have ended with the dot-com bust. George S. Yip believes that business models may shed important light on how we understand and practise strategy. Business academics and consultants have been writing about strategy for over 40 years. Yet there is still great confusion as to what strategy is. The Internet boom and bust introduced a new term, "business model", that may go a long way to clearing up the confusion.

Animating the Big Middle

Article

Dec 2005
J RETAILING

Eric Arnould

A Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective captures the motivating social and cultural contexts of retail patronage and purchase behaviors and the myriad motivating factors behind the retail purchase decision. A CCT perspective complements behavioral decision theory and social cognition research in retailing. For consumers, retailers represent a field in which operant resources interact. In these marketspaces, firms and consumers exert a mutual gravitational pull. Firms compete for a role in the culturally constituted projects that consumers pursue by offering certain resource combinations. A CCT-based approach to retailing strives to account for co-creation, namely, how consumers deploy their own cultural resources, aided by retailer-provided resources, to accomplish the pursuit of their personal identity and communal projects. The paper discusses strategic orientations for retail firms that spring from a resource view, four types of firm supplied operant resources, suggests some mechanisms through which consumers animate cultural resources and their motivations to do so, and offers suggestions for future research.

Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation

Article

Apr 2010
LONG RANGE PLANN

David J. Teece

Whenever a business enterprise is established, it either explicitly or implicitly employs a particular business model that describes the design or architecture of the value creation, delivery, and capture mechanisms it employs. The essence of a business model is in defining the manner by which the enterprise delivers value to customers, entices customers to pay for value, and converts those payments to profit. It thus reflects management's hypothesis about what customers want, how they want it, and how the enterprise can organize to best meet those needs, get paid for doing so, and make a profit. The purpose of this article is to understand the significance of business models and explore their connections with business strategy, innovation management, and economic theory.

) User Involvement Competence for Radical Innovation

Article

Mar 2007
J ENG TECHNOL MANAGE

Christopher Lettl

One important market related capability for firms which seek to develop radical innovations is the competence to involve the ‘right’ users at the ‘right’ time in the ‘right’ form. While former studies have identified a rather passive role of users in the radical innovation process, this paper focuses on the involvement of such users that are in the position to play an active role as inventors and (co)-developers. A multiple case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. Five radical innovation projects within four firms were selected including medical robots and computer-assisted navigation systems. The case study analysis reveals that firms who closely interact with specific users benefit significantly for their radical innovation work. These users have a high motivation toward new solutions, are open to new technologies, possess diverse competencies, and are embedded into a very supportive environment.

Value Creation in E-Business

Article

Jun 2001
STRATEGIC MANAGE J

We explore the theoretical foundations of value creation in e-business by examining how 59 American and European e-businesses that have recently become publicly traded corporations create value. We observe that in e-business new value can be created by the ways in which transactions are enabled. Grounded in the rich data obtained from case study analyses and in the received theory in entrepreneurship and strategic management, we develop a model of the sources of value creation. The model suggests that the value creation potential of e-businesses hinges on four interdependent dimensions, namely: efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, and novelty. Our findings suggest that no single entrepreneurship or strategic management theory can fully explain the value creation potential of e-business. Rather, an integration of the received theoretical perspectives on value creation is needed. To enable such an integration, we offer the business model construct as a unit of analysis for future research on value creation in e-business. A business model depicts the design of transaction content, structure, and governance so as to create value through the exploitation of business opportunities. We propose that a firm's business model is an important locus of innovation and a crucial source of value creation for the firm and its suppliers, partners and customers.