In recent years, marketing scholars have published a number of interesting and exciting findings regarding customer co-creation. I'd like to discuss two recent studies. The first study is by B.J Allen, Deepa Chandrasekaran and Suman Basuroy, it was published in 2018 in the Journal of Marketing. In this study, the researchers examined a specific type of co-creation that they call design crowdsourcing. They define this as the practice of soliciting functional design solutions from the crowd. A good example of this type of co-creation is the website, crowdspring.com. This is an online platform that allows firms to post design needs for the new products, such as the need for a new package design, and then share these needs with crowdspring's crowd of registered designers who could submit design concepts that are then reviewed by the firm. These researchers conducted both qualitative and quantitative studies that assess the impact of design crowdsourcing upon product performance. The results indicate that design crowdsourcing has a positive impact on the sales of new products that are low in customer appeal, but have no effect on the sales of products that are high in customer appeal. They also found that firms are more likely to engage in design crowdsourcing for products that are more technologically complex. In some, this research suggests that design crowdsourcing can be a beneficial tool for companies under certain conditions, especially for those who have complex technological products that have a low degree of initial customer appeal. The second study is by Karina Liljedal, that's hard to say, and Micael Dahlen. It was published in 2018 in The Journal of Marketing Communications. Now this study examines how customer development in the development and selection of ideas for new products is viewed by other customers. To do this, they conducted an experiment among nearly 400 participants in Sweden. In this experiment, these participants were asked to react to various scenarios that involve customers either giving or selecting ideas for new food item offered by a local hamburger restaurant. Half of the participants were told that the new menu item was a hamburger, which they call a congruent product, while the other half were told the new product was a pizza, which they frame as an incongruent product. They then asked participants to rate both the product and the restaurant. The results of this experiment revealed that participants had a more favorable impression of both the product and the restaurant when customers contributed ideas for an incongruent product, for the pizza. However, they found the opposite when customers selected ideas, they had a more favorable impression for both the product and the restaurant when the product was congruent for the hamburger. The results of this study suggests that firms should use customers to contribute ideas for products that are different than ones they currently offer, but to use customers to select ideas for products that are similar to the ones they currently offer. First, the Rule of One. When firms engage in new product development, they carefully test their ideas and concepts to ensure that they appeal to their broader set of target customers. In contrast, when customers contribute their new product ideas, they don't engage in this type of process. As a result, many of these customer ideas are rather idiosyncratic in nature, and may not appeal to other customers. For example, I prefer tea over coffee, I'm not a coffee drinker. Thus, if Starbucks asked me for my ideas, I would suggest they offer more tea and less coffee. Now this would probably be a bad idea since most Starbucks' customers seem to prefer coffee rather than tea. As a result of these types of personal idiosyncrasies, typically, only about one percent of all customer contributions are good enough to implement. This is a very low percentage, so for co-creation to work, companies need to get lots of ideas, provide incentives for customers to contribute. Second, authenticity is critical. In our new digital age, authenticity is becoming increasingly important, and customers are becoming increasingly skeptical and critical of companies. As a result, customers are much more likely to contribute their ideas, time, and energy to companies that have an authentic need for their help, and not just trying to exploit their efforts for commercial gain. For example, customers seem quite willing to contribute T-shirt designs to Threadless because its co-creation activity is viewed as highly authentic. Threadless began as a co-creation company, that's what they do. In contrast, customers would probably be less likely to give ideas for T-shirts to a traditional manufacturer that employs a large number of in-house designers. Third, patches and badges. We all like to be rewarded for our efforts. Customers who engage in co-creation are no exception. Thus, most successful co-creation initiatives award successful co-creators, not just financially, but also through some visible symbol of recognition. For example, the US Space Agency, NASA, rewards co-creators by giving them a special patch they can proudly display. In fact, NASA found that this patch was a stronger motivator than a financial reward. Fourth and finally, don't be the bad guy. As we discussed earlier, one of the dangers of customer co-creation is a possibility of alienating customers by rejecting their ideas. One way of reducing this risk is by engaging your broader customer community to evaluate, vote on, and select these contributions. For example, the US computer manufacturer, Dell, for many years, solicit customer ideas for product improvement via its IdeaStorm initiative. This initiative relied heavily on the customer community to evaluate these ideas. Thus, fellow customers felt that the rejected ideas came from the community rather than from Dell itself. This help reduce the sting of rejection, and help to avoid making Dell look like the bad guy.
