Lead Users and Non-Lead Users: Do Their Preferences Really Differ in Product Design?

Abstract

Nowadays, the lead user method (von Hippel, 1986; Luthje et al., 2005) and conjoint analysis (Green and Srinivasan, 1990) are widely used methods for new product development. Both methods collect and analyze customers' preferences and use them for (optimal) product design. However, whereas the lead user method primarily is intended to create breakthrough innovations (see von Hippel et al., 2001), conjoint analysis is more capable for incremental innovations (Baier and Brusch, 2009). The main objective of this paper is to measure if lead user preferences differ to non-lead user preferences by extending traditional conjoint analysis with a lead user identification technique and whether this fact can be used in (new) product design for generating breakthrough innovations. This combined procedure is compared to traditional conjoint analysis. The well-known field of mountain biking is used as the empirical setting. The study showed thirty new improvements and led indeed to different preferred attribute-levels.