Peter Keinz

Testing the Value of Customization: When Do Customers Really Prefer Products Tailored to Their Preferences?

Recently, researchers have paid increasing attention to the marketing strategy of customization. A key assumption is that customized products create higher benefits for customers than standard products because they deliver a closer preference fit. The prerequisite for this effect is the ability to obtain precise information on what customers actually want. But are customers able to specify their preferences that precisely? Several theoretical arguments raise doubts about this, implicitly challenging the value of customization. The authors conduct two studies in which they find that products customized on the basis of expressed preferences bring about significantly higher benefits for customers in terms of willingness to pay, purchase intention, and attitude toward the product than standard products. The benefit gain is higher if customers have (1) better insight into their own preferences, (2) a better ability to express their preferences, and (3) greater product involvement. This suggests that customization has the potential to be a powerful marketing strategy if these conditions are met. In the opposite case, firms willing to serve heterogeneous customer preferences need to adapt their customization systems in such a way that they explicitly address the customers’ inability to provide valid preference information.

“Does This Sound Like a Fair Deal?”: Antecedents and Consequences of Fairness Expectations in the Individual’s Decision to Participate in Firm Innovation

The Internet has given rise to new organizational forms of integrating users into firm innovation. Companies willing to make use of external resources can now outsource innovation-related tasks to huge “crowds” outside the company. The extant literature on participation motives assumes a symbiotic relationship between the firm and external contributors in which both parties have largely complementary motives and are only interested in their own utility. In two experimental simulations, we show that this understanding has to be amended: potential contributors not only want a good deal, they also want a fair deal. Fairness expectations with regard to the distribution of value between the firm and contributors (distributive fairness) and the fairness of the procedures leading to this distribution (procedural fairness) impact the likelihood of participation beyond considerations of self-interest. Fairness expectations are formed on the basis of the terms and conditions of the crowdsourcing system and the ex ante level of identification with the firm organizing it. In turn, they impact the individuals’ transaction-specific reactions and also inform their future identification with the firm. These findings contribute not only to research on open and user innovation but also to theories on organizational fairness by enhancing our understanding of the emergent field of fairness expectations.

A User Community-Based Approach to Leveraging Technological Competences: An Exploratory Case Study of a Technology Start-Up from MIT

Many studies highlight the impact of technology commercialization on innovation and wealth creation. However, this impact could be far greater, especially as many technologies developed with high costs and effort remain vastly underutilized. One important reason for this problem can be found at the front end of the technological competence leveraging process: searching for market opportunities for a technology is a formidable challenge. In many cases, alternative fields of application (or even a single viable market opportunity) for a given technology are simply unknown to the entity in charge of commercialization. Based on an extensive literature review, we identify two major shortcomings at the front end of the technological competence leveraging process which contribute to the underutilization problem: (1) the local search behaviour of the commercializing entity and (2) the use of solution-based instead of problem-based search specifications. On the basis of these insights, we discuss the potential role of user communities in the search for (additional) market opportunities for a given technology, a process usually referred to as technological competence leveraging. We then empirically explore a user community-based approach in an illustrative case study with a start-up from MIT. Our findings show that when users were included in the search process, the number of potential markets in which the technology could be applied was five times higher, and more far-distant application areas as well as application areas previously unknown to the technology holder were reached. In addition, we discover design principles for a user community-based search process, providing practitioners with a hands-on guideline for employing a user community-based approach to technological competence leveraging.

Customization: A Goldmine or a Wasteland?

Abstract Should firms invest in customization strategies? Customization is a “hot” topic advocated in many popular books and articles. On the other hand, spectacular failures in the recent past have raised doubts. We experimentally tested the value customization generates for customers in the diverse product categories of newspapers, fountain pens, kitchens, skis, and cereals. The findings are clear: customization by far outperforms the more traditional strategies of segmentation and mass marketing

Auf den Schultern von … Vielen! Crowdsourcing als neue Methode in der Neuproduktentwicklung

Zusammenfassung„Crowdsourcing” gilt als eine der wichtigsten neuen Methoden im Bereich der Neuproduktentwicklung mit einer stark zunehmenden Bedeutung. Viele Unternehmen experimentieren damit und viele aktuelle Forschungsprojekte versuchen, Möglichkeiten und Muster zu verstehen und die Methode weiter auszuarbeiten. Angesichts der Neuheit des Themas ist für Praktiker der Zugang zum Stand der wissenschaftlichen Forschung jedoch komplex und unübersichtlich. Was versteht man unter Crowdsourcing? In welchen Situationen und für welche Arten von Unternehmen ist diese Methode sinnvoll? Und welche Erfolgsfaktoren gibt es beim Einsatz von Crowdsourcing im Rahmen der Neuproduktentwicklung? Der vorliegende Artikel liefert Antworten auf diese Fragen, indem er die Fülle neuer wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse strukturiert und handlungsorientiert zusammenzufasst.AbstractRecent advances in information and communication technologies have paved the way for a new, powerful innovation management method: Crowdsourcing. Researchers and managers alike are discussing the value of this approach to corporate new product development activities. But what exactly is crowdsourcing? Which companies may benefit from this method? In which situations? An how to apply it? This article aims to provide answers to these questions. It contributes to the ongoing discussion about crowdsourcing by systematically summarizing the relevant scientific literature and providing concrete recommendations to managers who want to apply this method in the course of their new product development activities.

The Effectiveness of Firm-Controlled Supporters to Pacify Online Firestorms: A Case-Based Simulation of the “Playmobil” Customize-It Incident

We examine the effectiveness of employing firm-controlled supporters to pacify online firestorms via a case-based agent-based model of the Playmobil customize-it firestorm. We enrich traditional opinion dynamics models by integrating empirically observed aspects and use real-world data to calibrate and validate the model. Our simulations show that even a single firm-controlled supporter may significantly help pacify such a conflict. Moreover, such a firm-controlled infiltrator does not even have to be an “opinion leader” within the community in order to calm a conflict within a community.