Introduction

Can low-income consumers make a contribution to corporate innovation processes?

Since the groundbreaking work of von Hippel, researchers have affirmed that consumers in middle- to high-income markets can indeed contribute to innovation. Von Hippel has identified users who develop new products and services on their own, in particular when current market offers do not meet their needs (see, e.g., von Hippel 1982/1986/1988). Following his research, scholars have empirically shown that integrating consumers can be a key success factor for innovation (see, e.g., Gruner and Homburg 2000). Moreover, studies have investigated how companies can identify and build on user innovations, and how they can leverage the knowledge of users by integrating them into new product development processes (see section 2.1).