What is the role of consumers in product innovation?
Consumers today are smarter and more informed in their purchases. They play a big role in driving the product innovation as most companies today are bent towards their input. They are driven and motivated towards product innovation depending on the customer behavior. The alarming failure rate for new products has corporations looking to consumers to drive innovation in their markets, according to a report released by Forrester Research. Businesses, especially large corporations, are spending millions on product development and are under increased pressure to boost their ROI, Return On Investment, on a new product. That's leading them to give consumers a greater role in the process. They understand that this also improves customer loyalty and brand favorability. Research shows that customers are now more involved than ever before and they tend to show dissatisfaction in products more vocally. They provide feedback on what should be changed in the product to better suit them. This can be seen on many online blogs. A consumers dissatisfaction with a product is instantly spread over the internet through online community groups, and if it's a well known product, it's even more so.
Has this changed over time? Why or why not?
Product innovation is a critical process, which is necessary to bring a new product or service into the market. Product innovation often involves various aspects like idea generation, product design, detail engineering, market research as well as marketing analysis. According to a report released by Forrester Research, about 85% of the newly introduced products and services fail after a couple of years due to several reasons including the ignorance of consumers. Some of the roles of consumers in product innovation include:
Insight Provider: Companies can request and create a community of consumers, providing insights, identifying needs or evaluating ideas.
Customizer: Consumers can directly influence the final stage of the product development through adapting and selecting a predetermined set of product features as per their own preferences up to the extent to which firms’ value chain support it.
Co-Creator: Co-creation often involves all phases of innovation process such as idea generation, design & engineering, testing as well as launching phase of the product.
Creator: Innovation can also be initiated and driven by the consumers themselves. In such a situation; consumers often act as involved and independent value creators.
User: Consumer’s role as a “user” of a newly developed product can provide opportunity to test new product and its prototype.
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