Co-Creation as a Research Method in B2C New Product Development

Abstract

The traditional way of new product development is slowly becoming a growing challenge for international companies. In today’s transparent times of the World Wide Web, the growing importance of social media and online platforms, terms such as crowdsourcing, co-creation, user innovation, virtual customer integration and open innovation are becoming increasingly popular (Tanev et al. 2011, Hopkins 2011). They all characterize the same fundamental issue: the integration of end consumers in the innovation process. While the integration of customers into the internal innovation process is not entirely new, the term co-creation goes beyond customers expressing their desires and needs, but rather encourages the consumers to contribute their own personal creativity and problem-solving capabilities (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004). They become co-creators (Fueller 2010). In order to benefit from this wide range of creativity and knowledge of customers, management has to unseal the innovation process to become a successful player in open innovation (Chesbrough and van Haverbeke 2006).In this research we illustrate how a co-creation process is successfully implemented into the early stages of the innovation process. Most important issues are the questions of how to integrate customers into the idea generation and refinement as well as strategically using their feedback within defined product concepts. Based on a co-creation workshop in a FMCG company, the aim of this paper is to identify relevant success factors of a full co-creation process through a participatory observation and focused interviews. Furthermore, we aim to develop managerial implications for B2C companies on where and how to implement a co-creation process properly.Results indicate that co-creation plays an important role in the context of market research and traditional ways of including customers in product development. Co-creation is perceived as a supplementary research method and is most successful in packaging or design topics. Furthermore, it is crucial for co-creation to be embedded into some sort of online tool, enabling the customer to playfully approach a new product idea. Concerning the observed co-creation process, six important factors influencing the co-creation activity could be identified. Depending on the key questions of Who, What, How, Where, How much and How long, a co-creation process differs in its design and implementation.