Elsevier

Technovation

Volume 24, Issue 9, September 2004, Pages 683-695
Technovation

Characteristics of innovating users in a consumer goods field: An empirical study of sport-related product consumers

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4972(02)00150-5Get rights and content

Abstract

Empirical findings illustrate that users in industrial markets often play a dominant role in invention of new products. However, little is known about the innovation activities of end users in the field of consumer goods. The author reports on a survey of the innovation activities and characteristics of 153 users of outdoor-related consumer products. He finds a high level of innovation by these consumers. The results also reveal that innovating users can be reliably distinguished from non-innovating ones by characteristics such as the benefit they expect from using their innovations and the level of expertise they have in the use of the products.

Taken together, these two findings—frequent innovation by consumers and the possibility to identify efficiently those who innovate—imply that innovation by users can be an important source of new product ideas for consumer goods companies. Effective utilisation of this resource will require significant changes in methodologies for customer-driven idea generation.

Introduction

Empirical research in a number of fields has shown that users frequently play an important role in the development of new products. A significant fraction of the innovations within an industry are directly initiated by requests and concrete needs of users (Biemans, 1991, Utterback et al., 1976). But not only the initiative, also the idea and the concept for innovations often stems from the side of the user (Baker et al., 1986, Voss, 1985). Several studies could even show that the users also may dominate the subsequent stages of the development process. They are frequently the first to develop and use prototype versions of what later become commercially significant new industrial products (Shaw, 1986, VanderWerf, 1990, von Hippel, 1988a, von Hippel, 1988b).

Motivated by these findings, producers of industrial goods are beginning to learn to systematically seek out user-developed innovations as a source of ideas for new commercial products (Holt, 1988b, von Hippel et al., 1999. Early empirical results show that at least one producer—3M Corporation—is reaping higher sales and profits from this course of action than from the idea generation methods it has traditionally employed (Lilien et al., 2002).

The existing research focuses on technology driven innovations for industrial goods. For consumer goods, systematic evidence as to whether users are a significant source of innovation is only just beginning to be developed. Thus, while there are a number of documented cases of end users being the developers of significant consumer goods innovations there is only one systematic exploration of the importance of user innovation within a single category of end user products over time (Shah, 2000).

The lack of theoretical work and empirical studies in the field of innovative consumers leads to two research questions which are the focus of the present survey: first, there is a lack of understanding concerning the empirical relevance of innovation activities by users in consumer markets. Therefore, we ask whether innovating consumers exist and to what extent they undertake innovation efforts. Second, it is widely unexplored whether specific user characteristics discriminate between innovating and non-innovating users. In this paper a comparison between these two user groups is conducted in order to identify personal factors that explain why some users innovate and others remain passive.

We begin in Section 2.1 with a review of relevant findings concerning the role of consumers in the development of innovations. Next, we compile a set of possible characteristics of innovating consumers based on both research findings and anecdotal evidence (Section 2.2). In Section 3 we outline our research methods. The findings are presented in Section 4. In the final section we discuss the implications of the findings for the market research in the front end of innovations.

Section snippets

The role of consumers in the development of commercialised innovations

Academics and practitioners in marketing and innovation management widely agree that customer orientation is rewarded by higher corporate performance. Several studies provide support for the existence of a strong customer orientation–performance-relation (Cooper and de Brentani, 1991). The customer focus seems to foster new product advantage in terms of quality, reliability and uniqueness. This, in turn, is positively correlated with product market performance (Li and Calantone, 1998). Several

Empirical field

The empirical field of the present survey is the user population of outdoor products in Germany. Outdoor sports can be defined as ‘a complex of human activities performed in milieu of nature through their own strength (…)’ (Neuman, 1994). We focused on the four sports activities most cited in outdoor-related journals: climbing/mountaineering, hiking, cross-country skiing and mountain-biking. The manufacturers in the outdoor industry produce clothing, equipment and sports apparatus for these

Consumers’ innovation efforts

In this section we explore if users in the sample undertake innovation efforts in order to develop ideas, concepts and prototypes for new products.

More than one third of the customers (37.3%) generated at least one idea for improved or new outdoor-related products (Fig. 1). This finding suggest, that users, in fact, play a significant role in the generation of inventions—not only in industrial markets, but also in consumer markets.

The respondents were asked two describe their idea. According to

Discussion

In the present survey we have explored the innovation activities and characteristics of 153 users of outdoor-related consumer products. The survey reveals two major results:

  • First, more than one third of the respondents generated ideas for improved or new products. Approximately 9% of the user sample built prototypes or marketable products. This provides new insights for research on user innovation activities. Previous studies mainly determined the fraction of innovations that were developed by

Acknowledgements

The author thank Prof Eric von Hippel for his support and helpful ideas contributed to this article.

Christian Lüthje is academic assistant and senior research fellow at the Technical University of Hamburg. He studied business administration in Kiel and received his Ph.D. at the University of Munich. His main research interests lie in the fields of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. A significant part of his work focuses on market research and customer orientation in NPD. The author thanks Professor Eric von Hippel for his support and helpful ideas contributed to this article.

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    Christian Lüthje is academic assistant and senior research fellow at the Technical University of Hamburg. He studied business administration in Kiel and received his Ph.D. at the University of Munich. His main research interests lie in the fields of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. A significant part of his work focuses on market research and customer orientation in NPD. The author thanks Professor Eric von Hippel for his support and helpful ideas contributed to this article.

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