Characteristics of innovating users in a consumer goods field: An empirical study of sport-related product consumers
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.
References (58)
User and third-party involvement in developing medical equipment innovations
Technovation
(1991)- et al.
New industrial financial services: what distinguishes the winners
Journal of Product Innovation Management
(1991) A conceptual extension of the customer-active paradigm
Technovation
(1986)- et al.
Strategies of user-initiated product innovation
Technovation
(1987) Behavior analysis and consumer psychology
Journal of Economic Psychology
(1994)Cognitive styles of consumer initiators
Technovation
(1995)- et al.
Cognitive style and use-innovativeness for applications software in home computing: implications for new product strategy
Technovation
(1993) - et al.
From experience: developing new product concepts via the lead user method: a case study in a ‘low tech’ field
Journal of Product Innovation Management
(1992) User-oriented product innovation in theory and practice
Technovation
(1987)The role of the user in product innovation
Technovation
(1988)
Market-oriented product innovation at Høyang and Jøtul
Technovation
Incentives to innovate and the sources of innovation: the case of scientific instruments
Research Policy
Invention, innovation, re-innovation and the role of the user
Technovation
Appropriation and transfer of innovation benefit in the U.K. medical equipment industry
Technovation
Product tying and innovation in U.S. wire preparation equipment
Research Policy
The role of users in the development of applications software
Journal of Product Innovation Management
Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences
Linear Probability, Logit and Probit Models
Why R&D project succeed or fail
Research Management
Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations
Cognitive style and consumer innovativeness: an empirical test of Kirton’s adaption-innovation theory in the context of purchasing
European Journal of Marketing
Consumer initiators: adaptors and innovators
British Journal of Management
A propositional inventory for new diffusion research
Journal of Consumer Research
Measuring consumer innovativeness
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
The Motivation to Work
Lead users: a source of novel product concepts
Management Science
Lead users: a source of novel product concepts
The Sources of Innovation
Creating breakthroughs at 3M
Harvard Business Review
Cited by (354)
A machine learning and clustering-based methodology for the identification of lead users and their needs from online communities
2024, Expert Systems with ApplicationsInnovation communities' contributions throughout firms’ innovation processes: An outdoor sports industry case study
2023, European Management JournalLinking text characteristics of ideas to their popularity in online user innovation communities
2022, Computers in Human BehaviorProblem-oriented CBR: Finding potential problems from lead user communities
2022, Expert Systems with ApplicationsCharacteristics of Lead Users in Different Stages of the New Product Development Process: A Systematic Review in the Context of Open Innovation
2022, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity
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.