ServiceFriday: Customers – Your Most Valued Resource in Innovation

Customers are a significantly important resource for improving a company’s brand but they are often underutilized. Studies across service environments indicate that an engaged customer actively participates in idea generation and collaborative behaviors such as sharing knowledge, ideas and preference information to support the brand. According to an article published in the Journal of Services Marketing, utilizing customers’ feedback and collaboration through certain appealing techniques and stimuli can lead to improved innovation for a company.

With new advancements in online services, interactive “engagement platforms” enable consumers to exchange resources and co-create value for a brand. Businesses need to increasingly utilize this technology and encourage their customers to participate in “voluntary, discretionary, helpful behaviors toward the brand.” By providing a platform for customers to communicate with others on, their willingness to provide feedback and collaborate with fellow customers will increase and provide new and innovative ideas for a company.

There are two forms of customer engagement behaviors related to innovation development in social media: “intention to provide feedback to improve the brand, and intention to participate in collaboration with other customers in the brand community.” When businesses initiate and manage customer voluntary contributions through these two forms, their innovation development efforts will improve exponentially. Ignoring feedback or not bothering to initiate customer involvement eliminates this crucial resource. Open innovation activities on social media can capture large amounts of user-generated content for businesses.

Of course, any business may attempt to encourage their customers to participate in collaboration and feedback, but there are certain stimuli that bring about better results. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm was used to determine which design aspects most engage a consumer. The paradigm suggests that “environmental stimuli (S) lead to an emotional reaction (O) that, in turn, drives consumers’ behavioral response (R).”

Studies examining different environmental stimuli have identified four pivotal design characteristics that most influence a consumer online:

• Content quality
• Brand-page Interactivity
• Brand-page Sociability
• Customer contact quality

The impacts of these stimuli on customer value assessments were then examined to determine emotional and cognitive reactions evoked and what aspects most successfully lead to customer feedback and collaboration. When each of these stimuli are improved, customers are much more likely to engage in feedback and collaboration to help improve a companies’ brand and innovation.

Although social media may create more awareness of negative aspects of a brand, it is also an important platform for helping businesses learn what they can improve on and how.

To read the full article, go to the Journal of Services Marketing at this link. (A fee may apply.)