Customer Engagement


Book Description

How customers and consumer behavior have been changing due to technology and other forces is of prime interest. This book addresses the central questions regarding new emerging consumer behavior; how does social media affect this behavior; how and at what points do emotions affect consumer decisions; and what triggers this is: How should engagement be conceptualized, defined and measured? How do social media and other marketing activities create engagement? The book draws on the rich, extensive knowledge of the authors who are pioneers in the field. The book's editors have identified the weakness in the current knowledge and aim to address this gap by touching on significant conceptual and empirical contributions to this emerging literature stream, providing readers with a comprehensive contemporary perspective of customer engagement. The book also endeavors to develop a richer narrative around the notion of social media and customer engagement, and the non-monetary notion of social media within new media-based social networks.




Collaboration and Co-creation


Book Description

Today’s consumers are more knowledgeable, networked, and vocal. For them consumption is not merely an act of buying products and services, but an expression of their creative potential. Consequently, they are demanding a say and a voice in how companies conceive, develop, and deliver value to them. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear that a large number of companies are transforming how they innovate—not only in terms of developing new products and services, but in how they are created, delivered, and supported to customers. Open Innovation thinking, where companies collaborate with suppliers, distributors, and customers to co-create unique value, is fast replacing traditional thinking that viewed innovation as a proprietary activity and marketing as a static, one-way broadcast. However, while there is significant advocacy and buy-in for collaborating with customers, there is little guidance for companies on how to undertake the journey from applause and appreciation to execution. Only reading about others’ success stories – Nike, Hallmark, P&G, Mozilla, etc. – is not sufficient for helping a company develop a blueprint for themselves. In Customer Driven Innovation, strategy and branding consultant Gaurav Bhalla presents a concrete framework to help companies systematically and effectively design and implement collaborative innovation programs with their customers that can be applied in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts. The authors describe how today’s technologies allow companies to create dynamic dialogues with their customers through shared networks, virtual marketing techniques, and blogs to develop deeper relationships that reinforce brand loyalty and ultimately drive growth. They challenge traditional approaches to market research that measure "customer satisfaction" from a rear-window perspective, and help companies and their customers look forward instead.P>




The Future of Competition


Book Description

In this visionary book, C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy explore why, despite unbounded opportunities for innovation, companies still can't satisfy customers and sustain profitable growth. The explanation for this apparent paradox lies in recognizing the structural changes brought about by the convergence of industries and technologies; ubiquitous connectivity and globalization; and, as a consequence, the evolving role of the consumer from passive recipient to active co-creator of value. Managers need a new framework for value creation. Increasingly, individual customers interact with a network of firms and consumer communities to co-create value. No longer can firms autonomously create value. Neither is value embedded in products and services per se. Products are but an artifact around which compelling individual experiences are created. As a result, the focus of innovation will shift from products and services to experience environments that individuals can interact with to co-construct their own experiences. These personalized co-creation experiences are the source of unique value for consumers and companies alike. In this emerging opportunity space, companies must build new strategic capital—a new theory on how to compete. This book presents a detailed view of the new functional, organizational, infrastructure, and governance capabilities that will be required for competing on experiences and co-creating unique value.




The Power of Co-Creation


Book Description

Apple embraced co-creation to enhance the speed and scope of its innovation, generat­ing over $1 billion for its App-Store partner-developers in two years, even as it overtook Microsoft in market value. Starbucks launched its online platform MyStarbucksIdea.com to tap into ideas from customers and turbocharged a turnaround. Unilever turned to co-creation for redesigning prod­uct lines such as Sunsilk shampoo and revitalized growth. Nike achieved remarkable success with its Nike+ co-creation initiative, which enables a com­munity of over a million runners to interact with one another and the company, increasing its market share by 10 percent in the first year. Co-creation involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals—customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and other stake­holders—bringing them into the process of value creation and engaging them in enriched experi­ences, in order to —formulate new breakthrough strategies —design compelling new products and services —transform management processes —lower risks and costs —increase market share, loyalty, and returns In this pathbreaking book, Venkat Ramaswamy (who coined the term co-creation with C. K. Prahalad) and Francis Gouillart, pioneers in working with com­panies to develop co-creation practices, show how every organization—from large corporation to small firm, and government agency to not-for-profit—can achieve “win more–win more” results with these methods. Based on extraordinary research and the authors’ hands-on experiences with successful projects in co-creation at dozens of the world’s most exciting organizations, The Power of Co-Creation illustrates with detailed examples from leading firms such as those above, as well as from Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Ama­zon, Jabil, Predica, Wacoal, Caja Navarra, and many others, how enterprises have used a wide range of “engagement platforms”—and how they have even restructured internal management processes—in order to harness the power of co-creation. As the authors’ wealth of examples make vividly clear, enterprises can no longer afford to view custom­ers and other stakeholders as passive recipients of their products and services but must learn to engage them in defining and delivering enhanced value. Co-creation goes beyond the conventional “process view” of qual­ity, re-engineering, and lean thinking, and is the essential new mind-set and practice for boosting sus­tainable growth, productivity, and profits in the future.




The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing


Book Description

Expanding on the editors' award-winning article "Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing," this book presents a challenging new paradigm for the marketing discipline. This new paradigm is service-oriented, customer-oriented, relationship-focused, and knowledge-based, and places marketing, once viewed as a support function, central to overall business strategy. Service-dominant logic defines service as the application of competencies for the benefit of another entity and sees mutual service provision, rather than the exchange of goods, as the proper subject of marketing. It moves the orientation of marketing from a "market to" philosophy where customers are promoted to, targeted, and captured, to a "market with" philosophy where the customer and supply chain partners are collaborators in the entire marketing process. The editors elaborate on this model through an historical analysis, clarification, and extension of service-dominant logic, and distinguished marketing thinkers then provide further insight and commentary. The result is a more comprehensive and inclusive marketing theory that will challenge both current thinking and marketing practice.




Co-Creation, Innovation and New Service Development


Book Description

Involving customers in the development and production of new services becomes a powerful force across many creative industries. Customers can directly supply the firm with innovative ideas, provide skilled labour, and act as a powerful force in marketing. Firms across the world, as they seek to innovate and to better respond to market needs, begin to recognize the benefits stemming from customers’ involvement in their operations. Co-creation also becomes more prevalent as customers begin to expect it from firms – seeking to influence their favourite services or products, and to have them better tailored to their needs. Nevertheless, empowering the customers and involving them in the internal affairs of a firm is both difficult and risky. Despite co-creation becoming increasingly important to firms, very few accounts of it exist and many firms fail. Therefore, to navigate those straits, and to reap the benefits of co-creation, requires knowledge and more complete understanding of socio-cultural forces underpinning it. By studying a wide array of videogames firms in the USA and Europe, this book provides a unique insight into co-creation. It builds on the existing theories to provide unified framework for understanding co-creation in creative industries and other sectors. It combines insights from the dynamics of customer communities, with firm’s perspective on innovation management and organizational transformation. The book offers highly detailed insights into the industry, which is at the forefront of co-creation. Furthermore, it sheds new light on the videogames firms and their operations and is therefore ideally designed for researchers, educators, and students alike in the fields of knowledge management, innovation management, firm strategy, organization studies and creativity management.




The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development


Book Description

New Product Development is one of the most important challenges facing organizations today. The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Handbook of New Product Development 3rd Edition provides an exceptional review of cutting edge topics for both new and experienced product development leaders. It offers a comprehensive and updated guide to the practices, processes and tools critical to achieving and sustaining new product/service development success in today’s world, delivering valuable information about the fundamentals as well as emerging practices such as venturing, virtual product development and the use of social media in NPD. As the premier global advocate for professionals and organizations working in the fields of new product/service development, PDMA has assembled in the Handbook unique content on the critical aspects of product development success including its 2012 Best Practices Research, Lessons Learned from its Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Winners and keys to success from organizations with proven innovation track records. The 3rd Edition is an essential reference for anyone with responsibility for product development activities, from novices looking for fundamentals to experts seeking insights on emerging concepts, and is relevant for all functions and all product/service industries.




Handbook on Customer Centricity


Book Description

Drawing on the expertise of leading marketing scholars, this book provides managers and researchers with insights into the fundamentals of customer centricity and how firms can develop it. Customer centricity is not just about segmentation or short-term marketing tactics. Rather, it represents an organization-wide philosophy that focuses on the systematic and continuous alignment of the firm’s internal architecture, strategy, capabilities, and offerings with external customers.




Customer Engagement


Book Description

How customers and consumer behavior have been changing due to technology and other forces is of prime interest. This book addresses the central questions regarding new emerging consumer behavior; how does social media affect this behavior; how and at what points do emotions affect consumer decisions; and what triggers this is: How should engagement be conceptualized, defined and measured? How do social media and other marketing activities create engagement? The book draws on the rich, extensive knowledge of the authors who are pioneers in the field. The book's editors have identified the weakness in the current knowledge and aim to address this gap by touching on significant conceptual and empirical contributions to this emerging literature stream, providing readers with a comprehensive contemporary perspective of customer engagement. The book also endeavors to develop a richer narrative around the notion of social media and customer engagement, and the non-monetary notion of social media within new media-based social networks.




Service Innovation


Book Description

All the world's most advanced economies are dominated by service. The service sector also employs the largest number of people and it is the fastest growing sector, both in number of companies and employees. The questions posed in the book are: (1) How is it growing; (2) what are these new service innovations; (3) what are the drivers; and (4) how can organizations work with service innovations in a structured way? The book views service as the value-creating activity that customers perform in their own context. The role of a company is to provide the resources and knowledge to enable value creation. Based on this view, we develop a model of service innovation and develop guidelines for what is required from the organizational perspective; how should an organization view its customers in order to be successful, what does a service development process look like, and how to transform an organization that has a product focus to a service or solution provider.